The Economics of Gigabit 4G Mobile Backhaul: How "Wireless Fiber" 80 GHz Links Provide an Economical Alternative to Operator-Owned Fiber

Today, copper-based T1/E1 circuits dominate mobile base station site backhaul, complemented by the use of 6-38 GHz microwave links when copper circuits are either unavailable, too costly, or take too long to deploy. As 4G capabilities are added to today's urban 2G/3G networks or are rolled out as green-field deployments, cell site backhaul and aggregation network requirements will rise from the tens and hundreds of megabits/second into the gigabits/second of capacity range. Low cell-site fiber penetration rates, coupled with often prohibitive costs of new fiber lateral deployment, will drive the adoption of "Wireless Fiber" 80 GHz backhaul solutions, as a technology upgrade for both copper and microwave backhaul solutions.