The future of wireless

A Plextek-led consortium has completed a 6-month research study on behalf of the communication industries regulator Ofcom to investigate the use of wireless technology as an alternative for the provision of last mile communications to the home, as part of Ofcom’s Wireless Last Mile Investigation.

It asked Plextek to consider whether there is a way forward to offering economic, ubiquitous broadband wireless access, given that previous solutions have had marginal business cases. The study found that wireless cannot realistically compete with fibre for the provision of future broadband requirements over the whole of the last mile.

Steve Methley, Senior Consultant, Plextek comments: “This study is one of a number that Plextek has carried out for Ofcom. It considers the transition, over the next 10-20 years, from today’s ADSL broadband to the future requirement which we term ’Broadband 2.0’. The last mile requirement will increasingly be one in which there is convergence of the services and platforms providing communications and entertainment to the home. Future high definition (HD) TV services are likely to demand undiluted access to streaming content at 10-15Mb/s, per channel, which is massively in excess of what today’s ADSL systems can support. Not enough people understand that today’s ADSL is a contended service - delivered rates may fall to only hundreds of kb/s”