Qwest uniquely positioned to capitalize on wireless backhaul

CEN Feature (Nov 9 2010)

1. 

   Considering how wireless has been driving a large part of the growth at AT&T and Verizon, Qwest, the nation’s third largest telco, might appear to be at a disadvantage without a wireless network of its own. But what Qwest has done instead is to aggressively pursue a market whose growth is directly tied to the growth in wireless—namely, mobile backhaul.

    

   Qwest has been making a significant investment to bring fiber to cellsites to support high-speed backhaul connectivity using Carrier Ethernet to serve wireless carriers that are frantically expanding their network capacity to meet burgeoning demand for wireless data bandwidth. Last week, the No. 3 carrier announced an offering called “Qwest Adaptive Broadband” aimed at maximizing the business it gets throughout its 14-state region in providing cellsite connectivity.

    

   As Cliff Dinwiddie, Qwest’s director of wholesale business development, explained, “The vast majority of service provider cellsites connect via a TDM copper-based DS-1 connection, but their connectivity of choice to support new [connections] is fiber-based Ethernet. What Adaptive Broadband allows them to do is look at their entire network of cellsites and where the demand is and transition from copper-based TDM to the fiber-based Ethernet they will need to support their network today and going forward.”

    

   As part of the Adaptive Broadband offering, Qwest is looking at a wireless service provider’s entire backhaul network infrastructure. “They usually buy copper-based TDM on term plans,” Dinwiddie said. “They need to reduce their investment in copper in the network and coordinate it with the deployment of fiber.” To address that need, Qwest is “linking wireless carriers’ purchase of fiber and copper and coordinating the transition on their behalf,” Dinwiddie explained.

    

   Qwest offers two flavors of Carrier Ethernet on the fiber side, including Ethernet-over-SONET and a shared offering using metro Ethernet. Those options, Dinwiddie said, were developed in conjunction with wireless service providers.

    

   A wireless carrier might have thousands of cellsites across Qwest’s 14-state territory with varying degrees of traffic demand. Through the Adaptive Broadband program, those carriers will work with Qwest to coordinate when they flip a site from copper. In devising the customers’ price, Qwest will look at customers’ total bandwidth requirements and give them “the best possible cost-per-megabit through the transition and beyond,” Dinwiddie said.

    

   Qwest is asking wireless carriers to prioritize the upgrades planned for their cellsites and based on that information, Dinwiddie said Qwest “will proactively build where the largest demand exists.” In some cases, Qwest will consider upgrading sites based on the needs of a single customer if the overall agreement with that customer is of a sufficient size, he added.

    

   As the dominant incumbent local telco in its 14-state territory, Qwest is uniquely positioned to make this kind of offering because it already has copper to most of the sites in that territory. If a wireless customer needs added bandwidth at a site before Qwest plans to bring fiber there, Dinwiddie said Qwest will turn up additional copper lines for the customer.

    

   The fact that Qwest doesn’t have a wireless network of its own is probably another reason the carrier can make this kind of offering. I don’t anticipate AT&T or Verizon launching something akin to Adaptive Broadband any time soon because their priorities in upgrading connectivity to cell towers in their regions are most likely to be driven by the needs of their own wireless units. And even if those carriers were to make such an offer, it’s questionable how willing wireless competitors would be to share information about which of their cellsites are in the greatest need of bandwidth upgrades.

    

   Wireless carriers seem to have responded positively to Qwest’s Adaptive Broadband concept. The company already is in discussion about the offering with “multiple Tier 1 service providers,” Dinwiddie said.

   Bookmark or Share this article

Login to comment