Wireless Backhaul Importance Grows

With increasing wireless mobile phone users along with more sophisticated wireless devices such as the Blackberry and iPhone chewing up bandwidth, the need for wireless backhaul technologies is increasing. I am reminded of my 2005 TMC Labs review of NMS AccessGate, a wireless backhaul platform. that aggregates T1/E1 communications onto a common backhaul between the cell site and the MSO. It also performes statistical multiplexing which suppresses idle frames and idle channels for 2G services, making the most of backhaul bandwidth. It achieves a bandwidth savings ratio of up to 2:1.
\n
\nI'm going to steal my introduction here:
\n

\nOptimizing bandwidth utilization has become more critical even though simultaneously technology is evolving to improve bandwidth throughput — whether it’s wireless, over copper (DSL, T1, E1, etc.) or fiber. The reason is simply cost and the resultant margins. In an increasingly competitive telcom/datacom landscape, keeping your costs low with the highest possible profit margin is critical. In most wireless networks, operators bear the recurring cost of traffic backhauling in order to connect geographically dispersed cell sites with their core networks. As access networks have been built out to support wireless services, each newly deployed service has required additional dedicated transmission equipment (such as leased lines, satellite trunks, or microwave links) between the base station and the base station controller. According to NMS Communications, this backhaul cost can represent up to 20–30 percent of total network operating expenses (OpEx). By reducing the number of these connections, operators can eliminate a significant portion of network OpEx.

\nToday, Rich Tehrani points me to a relatively new TMCNet channel called Wireless Backhaul covering the lastest happenings in the wireless backhaul space.
\n
\nHere's a teaser.
\n
\nWireless service providers migrating their mobile offerings to packet-based 3G and 4G/LTE/WiMAX technologies are facing a significant increase in bandwidth demands (up to 20 times today’s rates by 2012) over their wireless backhaul networks, whether their own or leased from ILECs or alternative access providers. To provide this level of capacity in a cost-efficient manner, wireless backhaul is migrating to Ethernet from T1 TDM private lines.
\n
\nNow go check out the wireless backhaul channel.