Q&A with Sotheara Leang: What Is Fixed Wireless? Fixed Wireless vs. 4G LTE/5G for Your Business

There’s many misconceptions about fixed wireless and mobile broadband. From reliability differences to how you get your service, these technologies are different and serve different purposes.

Fixed wireless networks and 4G LTE/5G mobile broadband networks are distinct technologies with different strengths and weaknesses. Grasping these distinctions and the functioning of the technologies can determine whether you obtain the internet connection that suits your business needs or one that falls short of your expectations.

In this Q&A session, Vice President of Operations of EarthLink Business Sotheara Leang draws on more than 15 years of experiencing managing and operating wireless networks to decode these two technologies and explain their uses and drawbacks. He also addresses why these services are sometimes conflated, and how you can tell which service is being sold to you.

Let’s dive into the essentials with Sotheara Leang.

How does fixed wireless internet work?

It’s line-of-sight technology where we’re able to send high-capacity, high-bandwidth internet as an alternative access to your traditional wired services. So, we’re able to bypass your traditional wired services, like copper and fiber, and still provide high bandwidth, low latency services with business class services.

Fixed wireless does this by using a radio signal between two points, and that’s how we establish connectivity.

What are the main benefits of having a dedicated internet connection from a fixed wireless network?

Dedicated internet connection from the fixed wireless network is truly the only alternative service to your traditional telco services. It’s a wholly owned and operated network that bypasses all of the telco services. You’re protected from fiber cuts because we’re going from above–it’s really the only alternative to traditional fiber or copper services.

What is the difference between a point-to-point and point-to-multipoint wireless connection?

When you get into point-to-point or point-to-multipoint, that’s talking about how we engineer a connection to customers. A point-to-point link is a dedicated one-to-one connection. There’s one antenna, one customer, and that’s dedicated to a customer. When we have a point-to-multipoint, that’s a one too many. We have an antenna that’s directionalized so it covers anywhere from 30-, 60-, 90-degree sector, and we’re able to quickly turn up customers all onto this one antenna. So, we can have multiple customers on one antenna. With point-to-multipoint connections, bandwidth is still allocated and guaranteed per customer.

What are some potential drawbacks of using fixed wireless internet?

The drawback is, sometimes the weather impacts the circuits. We engineer our fixed wireless depending on the use case, but, and we typically have enough fade margin in the links for weather to not impact the performance of our links. Weather does have some impact on the services, but we try to minimize those impacts. Typically, our price is better than your traditional wiring services. We can install services much quicker than wired services.

How does business 4G LTE/5G internet service work?

4G internet service is a shared medium. It’s really similar to your traditional services, where, if you’ve got somebody that’s a high user in the area that impacts your services. The biggest thing is that 4G service typically is usage capped and fixed wireless isn’t–that’s the biggest differentiator. We use 4G/5G and there’s a place for it as an additional backup. But those usage caps are a big drawback to mobile broadband internet. And your speeds aren’t consistent, right? It’s up to 100 Mbps max. But again, it depends on the usage in the area, so it can be anywhere from 100 Mbps to as little as 1 Mbps.

Benefits of Fixed Wireless: higher bandwidth, dedicated speeds up to 10 gigs, fast installation, can be a fiber internet replacement product, and symmetrical speeds great for uploading.

Why would a business choose to have mobile broadband internet?

Mobile broadband internet is a good backup, and you never can have enough backup, right? And that’s what we typically use LTE for. It just depends on how mission critical your business is, and there’s an application for each service. Typically, we can have fiber with a fixed wireless backup and LTE as kind of a third backup. But, you know, maybe fiber is not available there, so you can have fixed wireless as a primary with LTE as a backup.

What are the potential weaknesses of having a mobile broadband internet connection for a business?

I think the biggest thing is usage caps and varying speeds. With mobile broadband advertising “up to” speeds, it can be hard to be sure you’re getting a reliable connection. With mobile broadband, where you place the device matters, and without professional installation your speeds can vary wildly depending on where in your space you deploy it. Even the materials used to build your building can impact the quality of a mobile broadband connection. For example, a metal building won’t get as good of a signal with an LTE connection.

What are the differences between a cellular 4G LTE/5G network when compared to fixed wireless?

We’re able to provide much higher bandwidth on fixed wireless; we’re able to provide speeds up to 10 Gigs dedicated, guaranteed bandwidth with fiber like SLAs, we can install the services quickly. LTE cannot. LTE cannot be a fiber replacement product, whereas fixed wireless can be a fiber replacement product. And fixed wireless is symmetrical. Fiber replacement like LTE is not symmetric. When you have high upload usage, fixed wireless is a much better fit for you.

Why do many businesses and industry professionals confuse fixed wireless and 4G LTE/5G?

I think it’s marketing, mostly. The major carriers have spent a lot of money on marketing Fixed Wireless Access (FWA). So, unless you are really on the technical side of the business, you may not know the difference between fixed wireless and mobile broadband. There’s just been a lot of marketing dollars spent there. What we’re calling fixed wireless is a little bit more niche and not as widely known compared to a lot of the major carriers and their mobile broadband products.

What terms should businesses be aware of when considering fixed wireless or 4G LTE/5G?

I think fiber replacement, symmetrical bandwidth, quick installations, reliability, symmetrical are all terms that are mostly associated with fixed wireless. You know, we have fiber service level agreements, and I think that’s the big difference.

A Service Level Agreement (SLA) guarantees uptime. It’s guaranteed up time and response. When you have issues with LTE, if you try to call your carrier, they’ll tell you to wait or try again or something. Nobody’s monitoring an LTE link to see if you are really getting your speeds all the time. We monitor performance metrics and things like that. So, you have a monitored service. You have a dedicated team, and that ensures the service is up and working.

When would a customer be best served by fixed wireless instead of a mobile broadband network?

A customer should choose fixed wireless if you want those higher dedicated speeds with symmetric service. Fixed wireless is a fiber replacement service that can be installed quickly. Take businesses like construction companies that are doing a lot of uploads with large files– LTE is not a good fit. This is because LTE is asymmetric, so the upload speed is a lot slower. Another example is when you have a lot of people on site and you’re making video calls.

I think its symmetric speeds and no usage caps are the main reasons to go with fixed wireless. If you’re really using it for everything, you can blow through an LTE pretty quickly by streaming and then you get throttled. There’s no throttling with fixed wireless.

You’re waiting a long time to install fiber; fiber’s anywhere from 30 to 60 days, if you’re really lucky. Dedicated fiber can take as many as 30 to 90 days up to six months. With fixed wireless, we’re not trenching up roads. We’re not dealing with permitting and things like that. And it’s really the only true diversity, right? So, if you’re really mission critical, you can get two fiber circuits, but if that trench gets cut, guess what? Both your connections are gone. The best-case scenario is you have one connection from the ground and one from your roof with fixed wireless.

When would a customer be best served by mobile broadband instead of fixed wireless?

The best time for using mobile broadband is when there’s no other options available. Fixed wireless does require line of sight so when that’s not available, your only option may be LTE or satellite.

I would say LTE is more of a fit for small and medium-sized businesses. It’s lower tiered usage and fixed wireless is geared for high-capacity dedicated bandwidth at a reasonable price and quick turnaround.

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How can customers tell if they’re being sold true fixed wireless and not mobile broadband?

Typically, mobile broadband will have usage caps. I’ve seen plans say unlimited.* It’s unlimited up to 300 Gigs, then you get throttled. But I would say usage caps are the biggest one. If you’re seeing guaranteed speeds up to a certain speed, that’s a sign they’re selling mobile broadband.

Another difference is fixed wireless has professional installation. We’re doing a professional installation. When you do buy LTE, typically, they’re mailing you essentially a hot spot. And you’re having to go hook that up. It’s a fiber replacement service. So that means you get dedicated IPs. You get static IPs that most businesses require on top of that professional installation.

What sets EarthLink apart from other fixed wireless providers?

I think it’s a support of a product and the delivery. There’s been some legacy fixed wireless that are doing it subpar. There are cheap ways to do it, and some other providers choose that route. You will find some people that probably have a bad experience with fixed wireless, depending on who they got it from and if their provider was doing it cheaply and don’t have the network infrastructure that we have.

We have a really robust network infrastructure where it’s not like one thing goes down and 50 people lose their internet connection. We’ve got redundancy built in and we’re truly a carrier-grade network. When it comes to reliability, we invest heavily in power on our sites where some of the small providers may not. With some providers, the wind blows the wrong way, and they’ve got network issues. With us, it’s different because we’re monitoring everything. We typically know about problems before the customer knows about problems, and we’re acting and getting things fixed before the issue impacts customers.

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