Microwave Extending Fiber in Africa
Last week, I attended AfricaCom in South Africa. I expected to spend the week talking about mobile backhaul and LTE expansions. Yet, while mobile backhaul certainly was the subject of many conversations, the fiber expansion that’s taking place across Africa dominated all. In fact, operators in many African countries are aggressively rolling out fiber. This, in turn, is driving an expectation for fiber-equivalent capacity at enterprises and buildings across the continent, despite fiber typically only hitting a small percentage of buildings. As a result, service providers are looking to microwave solutions to provide last mile extensions to their fiber network to provide enterprises with fiber-like capacities. This is a tremendous opportunity, but drives a different set of requirements for Microwave systems.
In order to roll out fiber extensions, African service providers are looking for very high capacity solutions that provide a gigabit or more. This makes E-Band suitable, although, depending on the area, E-Band is limited in range to 1-3 km. in many cases. As a result, lower frequency multiple-channel microwave solutions are ideal for providing more than a gigabit of throughput. In addition, to maximize capacity, bulk compression techniques are ideal, and can minimize the spectrum requirements and thereby reduce recurring costs. As most of the installations are being performed on building tops, there are often limitations for 30 cm or 60 cm antennas. To address this, it is critical to have a high power microwave system that can minimize antenna size, while delivering high availability and fast connections. What’s more, because building top deployments typically have no indoor equipment space, providing an all-outdoor system with integrated switching and service delivery capabilities is critical.
In addition to meeting the cost, capacity and SLA requirements, another important consideration for fiber extension solutions is that they should be quick and simple to install in order to minimize the commissioning expenses. This makes it critical that the wireless system has integrated installation tools and an effective network management system. It is also important for system providers to properly certify their personnel to install required services in the most efficient manner possible.
With the expansion of fiber in Africa, there is a tremendous opportunity for microwave to provide fiber extensions. By properly using both technologies, service providers can deliver rapid ubiquitous gigabit connections to their customers who will benefit with outstanding connectivity and significantly improved network performance.
If you would like to read my future articles covering the telecom market, follow me on LinkedIn or Twitter
Kluk Associates International•2K followers
9yGreg, you should know about PicoCELA small cell wireless backhaul based on tree topology as opposed to typical mesh. Have a look at www.picocela.com and let me know what you think. Can it be a disruptive wireless technology with 10 hops + capability?
Artemis Defense Technologies•7K followers
9yAfrica, certainly RSA and Kenya was and still is to a good degree the major user of FSO technologies back in 1998 to date. They also use many wireless technologies. I would go as far as saying they are more open to wireless that any continent. The issue at hand is that the new breed of Wireless companies need to stop with the Wireless stupid talk like "Fiber Fast" when it really isn't. Here's the news , most of the serious buyers don't want to hear it either. As a guy who has been building seriously significant networks since the mid nineties .I absolutely cringe when I read people from Wireless companies who have been around five minutes pontificate how it should be done. Especially when their sales sort of dictate the vote of nonsense they are spouting. Telco companies need to have buried assets to be the Telco ( its politics ) . Yes l am a wireless guy. I've sold more equipment in value than most people reading this will have had in VC capital and sales to date combined. The one thing I've learned , if you are using common sense as the measure of why people should buy your Wireless product , find another job , quickly !
4K followers
9yvery true Bernard, this is why multi channels mw with bulk compression is an optimal solution technically. once it is coupled with a strong integrator, it has very attractive use cases, fibre extension, fibre redundancy, remote areas connection, .... endless options.
Social Media, Branding &…•7K followers
9yWell stated, Bernard Prkic.
DragonWave Ltd•2K followers
9yIt's good to see some discussion here. I agree that fibre is deemed to be an "ideal" physical layer by many players, especially when capacities are required in excess of 10 Gbps; there's no real substitute for optics at those speeds - at least not yet. Still, the vast majority of real-life access applications do not require speeds >0.5-3 Gbps. Furthermore, time to market for fibre tends to be long (permits, trenching) and up-front cost can be immensly prohibitive for those wanting to build their own fibre connections. People also tend to forget that renting 3rd party dark fibre or just capacity on 3rd party (fibre) infrastructure (e.g. 100 Mbps or 1 Gbps leased lines) can be very expensive from a recurring cost (OPEX) point of view. Therefore, there's still ample opportunity for wireless. Capital expenditure, including installation cost, is much lower than with fibre, and OPEX is much lower than leased line OPEX in almost all cases.