Investing in FWA or buying FTTP wholesale: a comparison for mobile network operators
18 March 2024 | Research
Strategy report | PPTX and PDF (19 slides) | Wireless Infrastructure| Fibre Infrastructure
"In countries where the FTTP ecosystem has been delayered, the relative TCO cost of FWA and FTTP are quite balanced."
This report asks whether challenger fixed-wireless access (FWA) is economically sustainable in the long term. It contrasts the internal cost to a mobile network operator (MNO) of expanding capacity to the costs of wholebuying.1
In addition to providing recommendations for MNOs, the report provides recommendations for how fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) network owners can bridge the gap between MNOs’ wholebuy requirements and their own wholesale offerings.
Questions answered in this report
- What are the limits of the fallow capacity approach to 5G FWA?
- What are the relative costs per premises passed of capacity enhancements to FWA, and how can these best be calculated?
- How does the monthly TCO of self-supplying various forms of FWA stack up against wholesale FTTP rates?
- How might wholesale FTTP plays best address the opportunities that arise from migrating FWA customers off mobile networks?
Who should read this report
- Telecoms operator network strategy teams
- Mobile RAN equipment vendors
- FWA customer premises equipment (CPE) vendors
- Fixed access vendors
1 Throughout this report we use the terms ‘wholebuy’ and ‘wholebuyer’ instead of ‘buy wholesale’ and ‘purchaser of wholesale services’.
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