5G doesn’t need Fibre to the Home

see MOBILE FIRST, FIBRE TO THE 5G from CommsDay (PayWall) – and link to report [http://www.commcham.com/ft5g/] Editor Grahame Lynch has identified some clarity emerging in the telecommunications industry. Brian Williomson, from Deutsche Telekom has contradicted group think which has prevailed for some time, about the need for FTTH to achieve high capacity mobile internet. Grahame writes: There’s... View Article

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see MOBILE FIRST, FIBRE TO THE 5G from CommsDay (PayWall) – and link to report [http://www.commcham.com/ft5g/]

Editor Grahame Lynch has identified some clarity emerging in the telecommunications industry. Brian Williomson, from Deutsche Telekom has contradicted group think which has prevailed for some time, about the need for FTTH to achieve high capacity mobile internet. Grahame writes:

There’s still an extraordinary amount of double-think among the broadband talking shops. Just last week the FTTH Council Europe opined that pervasive FTTH was necessary for 5G

Williamson’s argument:

FTTH is not necessary to deploy 5G. Further, it is not clear that an FTTP network would offer strong complementarity to deployment of fibre to new cell sites, and the costs and time required to deploy FTTP may make the two mutually exclusive in large parts of the EU in the near-term

He then goes on to explain that in the short term, it can make some sense in some situations to extend FTTP for supporting 5G.

It seems this argument to deploy FTTP by the industry, is one of convenience. They are technomotivated (and in many cases economically) to lobby governments to support the layout of more fibre.