Last October, Nokia announced the deployment of its FWA solution by nbn, a leading provider of copper, fiber, FWA and satellite services in Australia. nbn selected Nokia’s 5G FWA millimeter Wave (mmWave) Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) to deliver high-speed broadband service to homes and SMEs in rural Australia.
FWA stands for Fixed Wireless Access (FWA), a service that leverages cellular technologies (such as LTE and 5G) to deliver fixed broadband connectivity to homes and enterprises. Nokia’s innovations in this space, specifically in the FWA CPE mmWave technology, have unleashed capabilities not experienced before on cellular-powered broadband, enabling operators to rapidly scale their services and close the gaps in delivering ubiquitous connectivity.
Nokia’s long reach 5G FWA solution builds on latest breakthroughs in the mmWave space, enabling operators to harness the new 29-34 Ghz spectrum range as opposed to being constricted to the currently used sub 6Ghz, while incurring only a fraction of the spectrum cost. This opens up more spectrum for operators, ranging from 400 MHz to 800 MHz, contributing to increased capacity and ultimately, better network performance. Spectrum auctions have been successfully conducted in countries like Japan, Australia, Europe and United States, paving the way for wide-scale 5G FWA deployments across the globe.
Enabling speeds exceeding 1 Gbps, the new spectrum made available via mmWave technology allows operators to offer an indistinguishable ‘fiber-like’ service to their customers. It also delivers a major capacity boost in terms of coverage and connections, allowing operators to double the number of customers powered by any single base station.
Nokia - NBN partnership
Nokia’s partnership with nbn will greatly augment the operator’s fixed wireless broadband service, currently covering 650,000 premises across the country. The deployment will see mass installations of indoor units (or gateways) and outdoor units, connected with a 2.5Gbps power over Ethernet, across homes and businesses.
Willem VerbiestUsing an innovative antenna design to support high frequency mmWave bands, the deployment of Nokia’s FWA mmWave CPE by nbn marks a world-first for gigabit speeds, spanning distances of up to 7 kilometers. The high-gain, high-power long reach technology selected by nbn is optimized for rural deployments and is capable of addressing high signal attenuation typically associated with long distance deployments of mmWave. According to Willem Verbiest, Head of Strategy, Upstream Activities and Market Enablement at Nokia Broadband Devices Business Unit, “The gain of our system is 30 dBi, which is 1000 times more sensitive than a typical smartphone in terms of receiving signals. Leveraging our technology, we are able to deliver speeds of 3.4 Gbps at 6 kilometers.” Circumventing the spectrum limitations in 4G FWA, the deployment will lead to a huge network capacity growth for nbn, with an expected 50% expansion in its wireless footprint.
“We are facing a step-change in demand for broadband in rural and regional areas, with an estimated 300% increase in demand for data on our fixed wireless network over the next ten years. Nokia’s 5G mmWave solution allows nbn to better utilise both our sub6GHz and 5G mmWave spectrum allocations to vastly extend the range, speed and capacity of our existing fixed wireless network and improve the end user’s experience,” said Jason Ashton, Executive General Manager, Fixed Wireless and Satellite at nbn.
FWA vs fiber
Bringing connectivity to sparsely populated rural areas is expected to be one of FWA’s biggest value propositions. FWA’s appeal in this case is straightforward – it can bypass geographical constraints and connect homes that are scattered over expansive interiors. To be connected to high-speed Internet, all that a customer requires is a CPE. Likewise, FWA is also a technology of choice for areas where take-up of fiber is inherently low, typically measured in terms of the number of subscribed households within a kilometre square. Fiber requires, at the minimum, a take-up rate of 60-70% to be a viable means. In both these scenarios, FWA clearly stands out as a technology that can compliment fiber to deliver broadband services to more users.
FWA is also a natural choice for operators venturing into fixed broadband services but who lack the prerequisite access network infrastructure. A case in point is T-Mobile. T-Mobile, the second largest wireless operator in the United States currently boasts more than 2 million FWA customers and has emerged as the fastest growing Internet provider in the country for four consecutive quarters. The operator had started rolling out the service a couple of years back and is expected to reach 11 million customers by 2025.
FWA for urban and suburban deployments
Nokia 360 High Gain
Nokia’s FWA mmWave innovations follow a series of advancements it has introduced in recent years in the FWA space. Last year, Nokia unveiled its 360 High Gain antenna which features omni-sensitivity, with the ability to pick up mmWave signals from any direction. Using a 360 fingerprint of the environment and applying advanced analytics, the CPE dynamically optimizes signal selection for the best coverage and service quality. The 360 High Gain FWA CPE allows operators to deliver connectivity in environments that are continuously evolving, especially suburban and urban areas.
Moreover, the omni-sensitivity highly simplifies CPE installation.
For dense urban areas, the 360 High Gain FWA CPE will enable operators to introduce new capacity, relieve congestion and improve service quality, driving superior indoor connectivity. Trials for second generation proof of concept for the 360 High Gain CPE are currently ongoing across Europe, APAC and the United States.
Last mile customization
It takes 5G radio networks to deliver FWA services but it’s the devices in the home that create a unique differentiated expertise for consumers. Nokia’s mmWave innovations build on a successful ecosystem of products in their FastMile family products, including self-installable receivers that can mount to the inside or outside of a window and gateways with Wi-Fi 6 integration and customizable features. With an application container architecture, Nokia’s Fast Mile 5G Gateway 3.2, for example, offers operators the flexibility of customizing their broadband services with a wide range of container-based applications ranging from cybersecurity to analytics to productivity. These enable operators to introduce various add-on capabilities and services such as gaming and multicast video delivery, tailored to different customers and market segments. Not only do these bring new levels of intelligence and adaptability to broadband services, they also improve operator monetization while making the best of Nokia’s continuous innovations in the 5G FWA. All Nokia FastMile CPE work with the Nokia Altiplano FastMile cloud-based Controller which uses open APIs to help operators drive service fulfilment, service assurance and service optimization.
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- Learn more about Nokia’s mmWave FWA solution
- Read Nokia’s blog post ‘Nokia fixes mmWave wireless access’
- Check out Nokia’s whitepaper ‘The emerging opportunity for 5G mmWave Fixed Wireless Access’
