How FWA is transforming broadband market, bridging the digital divide

Fixed wireless access (FWA) is an ideal way to provide consumers and businesses with new options for affordable, reliable, high-quality broadband — including the roughly 42 million rural Americans trapped in the digital divide. A new Network Media Group video explores the 5G FWA market in terms of network deployments, customer adoption, the evolving business case and the impact of the nearly $63 billion available from the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) and the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program.

Now available on demand, the video — “What is the Market Outlook for FWA?” — explores the FWA market opportunity for cities, suburbs and rural communities and features thought leaders from Futurum, Vodafone, WISPA and iconectiv.

In order to capitalize on the opportunity of FWA, the panelists discuss how the entire FWA ecosystem — from service providers to tower companies — can streamline processes such as identifying new site locations and managing interconnection. For example, PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that CSPs waste approximately 20% of their network and operations budgets each year due to incomplete information about infrastructure assets. iconectiv TruOps™ Common Language® helps overcome those and other challenges by combining authoritative data and an industry-standard nomenclature to enable more informed network planning and customer provisioning. Rural CSPs can use Common Language to instantly determine the location and functionality of network infrastructure such as towers, poles, routers and points of presence.

By increasing the speed and efficiency of FWA deployments, service providers can also maximize the impact of federal funding such as BEAD and RDOF.

“Tools like Common Language enable rapid deployments and swifter, more expedited installations, particularly in areas where laying cable has traditionally been impractical,” said Steve Tang, CTO, iconectiv. “Shared data in the Common Language code sets help ensure that CSPs continue to have access to enhanced site selection [and] enhanced infrastructure performance, particularly in those underserved areas, for better connectivity.

“For decades the industry has relied on Common Language to realize benefits for other types of technologies. Extending that into to fixed wireless access is really just a natural extension,” Tang added. Business Wire