Two weeks ago, my Infinera colleagues and I attended WISPAPALOOZA 2024 in Las Vegas, showcasing our 400G optical transport solutions to help broadband providers meet their digital equality goals. Our key messaging centered around “middle-mile simplicity” and “enabling your entire community.” At first thought, it might not be clear why an optical networking market leader like Infinera, which delivers 400G intelligent coherent pluggables and 1.2T compact modular multi-haul systems, would sponsor an event centered around wireless internet service providers (WISPs). WISPs are rural broadband network operators that employ fixed wireless access (FWA) in the last mile to cost-effectively reach ultra-low-density rural areas. So, here is the connection. As they transition their broadband access networks from legacy FWA to more modern FWA or fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) architectures, they will also evolve their middle-mile networks to provide the increased capacity, greater reliability, reduced latency, and lower cost per bit needed to support their planned broadband expansion. This is why the middle mile matters.
As WISPs and other internet service providers (ISPs) upgrade or build out new middle-mile networks to maximize their rural broadband expansion projects, they will weigh different middle-mile network buying criteria as they look at their individual network challenges.
As I listened to the industry presentations and discussed network challenges with service providers, I found it interesting, but not surprising, that the topics coalesced around four reasons why middle-mile networks need to be modernized. I like to call them the four tenets to delivering digital equality, and, by no coincidence, they are also Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) network funding application requirements. They are:
- High speed
- 100/20 Mb/s minimum, 1000/1000 Mb/s (gigabit) preferred
- Low latency
- Reliability
- Affordability
- No pricing higher than the median national price, e.g.,
High-speed broadband means using FTTH and next-gen FWA architectures
Delivering high-speed internet to all is a key tenet of the BEAD program. An internet service is deemed broadband if it can deliver 100 Mb/s in the downstream direction and 20 Mb/s upstream. Funding allocation preference for BEAD and other funding programs like the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) is given to projects that would offer gigabit speeds, with new networks using FTTH architectures being the main beneficiaries of that preference. However, at the WISPAPALOOZA 2024 event, there was a spotlight on new FWA technologies capable of delivering gigabit broadband service deeper into rural areas – specifically, Tarana’s next-generation fixed wireless access (ngFWA) product using 6 GHz wireless technology to extend symmetric gigabit service over a kilometer over the air.
Now, what we need to understand is that the middle mile that supports an FTTH deployment model needs only to pass within 20-40 km of the underserved/unserved locations. Using an FWA deployment model, the service launch point needs to be within just a few kilometers of the target broadband locations, thus demanding a larger and more comprehensive middle-mile network. Most FWA aggregation sites will connect with the middle-mile network using 10 GbE interfaces, unlike modern FTTH solutions that connect using 100G and even 400G uplinks. This means a robust modern middle-mile solution has the ability to cost-efficiently drop off 10 GbE interfaces while also supporting 100G and 400G network capacity. Another key point that kept coming up was the need for access and middle-mile solutions to be deployed in remote locations, therefore needing them to be environmentally hardened for deployment in outside plant locations – transponders, amplifiers, filters, and multiplexers.
Low-latency connections deliver better quality of experience
The second tenet, or BEAD funding requirement, is low latency. Specifically for BEAD, 95% of the time the broadband service round-trip delay needs to be at or below 100 milliseconds. This means the time for your data to travel from you to its destination, i.e., a gaming server, content delivery network (CDN), or data center, and back again. Now, 100 milliseconds of latency is not going to get a hardcore gamer very excited; it would take a network ping of less than 20 milliseconds to achieve that. However, for video conferencing, another low-latency application used for work from home, 100 milliseconds is considered quite good. Generally, any and all broadband access technologies can meet this relatively low bar. Only satellite, even the lower-latency version, low Earth orbit (LEO) Satellite, will be challenged meeting this latency threshold, where 20-50 milliseconds of latency is considered fast.
With the exception of LEO, the type of broadband access network generally does not have any great consequence to meeting or missing the 100-millisecond threshold. However, what could impact meeting or missing it would be adding in lengthy propagation delay from abnormally long middle-mile paths from the access network, through the point of presence (PoP), and to the internet and the user’s data. In the U.S., we employ internet exchange point (IXPs) to improve the time it takes to access the internet. IXPs are an alternative to routing traffic across multiple ISPs, sometimes in latency-bloating “trombone” network paths. IXPs allow ISPs to exchange traffic directly, reducing latency and improving network performance. To take full advantage of IXPs, ISPs will lean toward deploying and operating their own middle-mile network ISPs or partner with an ISP or neutral carrier that does. This is their effort to gain greater control over their network routes, providing them the ability to directly connect to an IXP.
Service reliability requires building better broadband access and middle-mile networks
The bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and thus its broadband administrator, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), requires that funded BEAD projects deploy broadband service with network reliability that supports no more than 48 hours of outage time over any 365-day period. BEAD’s notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) calls out that a reliable broadband service is connected to any number of fixed wired and terrestrial-based fixed wireless access technologies using a hybrid of licensed and non-licensed spectrum. LEO satellite was not on their list of network solutions to be used to deliver reliable internet. FWA technologies were cited at the WISPAPALOOZA conference as becoming more “reliable” with the nationwide allocation of the 6 GHz spectrum for unlicensed use and the availability of more advanced FWA multi-path and interference cancellation technologies that mitigate line of sight issues like tree foliage and rain while extending the reach of the signal. Discussions with ISPs showed a need to upgrade existing low-speed microwave middle-mile networks, whose towers are adversely affected by high winds, to more reliable, higher-capacity fiber optic-based variants. Beyond upgrading middle-mile networks’ microwave links to fiber optic links, network operators will improve network reliability with more fault-tolerant network topologies.
Service affordability – more than availability – is needed to deliver digital equality
The last, and definitely not least important, tenet is supporting broadband service affordability to deliver digital equality. In the U.S., it is often cited that lack of affordability and not lack of availability of broadband is the main reason for the digital divide. At the WISPAPALOOZA event, FWA technology advancements were highlighted as having the ability to further reduce the cost of homes connected. The latest gigabit-capable FWA solutions offer USD $1,000 per connection. This compares to $2,700 per rural home passed, using the more economical fiber deployments model – aerial versus trenched fiber, as cited in the FBA’s Fiber Deployment Annual Report 2023.
Many BEAD funding applicants highlighted their plans to offer low-cost $60 per month service plans (using FWA solutions), reduced to $30 after Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) deductions to “score more points” with state broadband offices. The U.S. government’s ACP provided $30 rural, and $75 on tribal land, monthly internet service discounts; however, these subsidies ended on June 1, 2024. FWA network provider Tarana went on record during WISPAPALOOZA that they helped an ISP, Midco, offer $39 monthly internet service. These non-5G FWA solutions are much easier to install and operate, requiring no special knowledge. They use mobile app installation wizards much like that used to install home Wi-Fi routers. Similarly, middle-mile network operators looking to reduce costs look for optical transport solutions with network automation capabilities and open APIs supporting multi-ISP middle-mile network sharing and simplified interconnection with neighboring optical networks and terminating IXPs.
My colleagues and I benefited from our quality discussions at WISPAPALOOZA. I learned a lot from this important group of innovative ISPs and how they will be crucial in our collective effort to achieving digital equality, offering high-speed, reliable, affordable internet to all. Infinera and its partner ecosystem are well positioned to help these WISPs, and for that matter, incumbent telcos and electric and telephone cooperatives alike, modernize their middle-mile networks.
Clearly this time around, what happened in Vegas didn’t stay in Vegas.
