The New Telecom Calculus: Fixed Wireless Access + SD-WAN = Huge Opportunity

It was the early 20-teens, after 4G networks went live, that people first began to seriously consider whether cellular networks could one day replace wireline for primary broadband connectivity. By end of 2023, 4.6 billion people, 57% of the world’s population, were accessing the Internet over mobile networks. Even so, when it comes to the connections subscribers rely on for their most important broadband requirements at home and work, traditional wired networks have continued to dominate. At least, so far.

Today, fixed wireless access (FWA) has become one of the fastest-growing lines of business for communication service providers (CSPs), as well as one of the most profitable. According to Grand View Research, the global FWA market eclipsed $143 billion in 2023 and will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.8% from 2024 through 2030. (In some markets, like the United States, it will grow even faster (Figure 1).) FWA has already become mobile operators’ second-largest 5G use case after mobile broadband. And it’s proving to be great business. FWA households typically use 10-18 times more data than a typical mobile subscriber and, according to CSPs we’re working with, generate more than double the average revenue per user (ARPU).

Figure 1. U.S. FWA market growth through 2030

Clearly, the idea of cellular networks as a viable alternative to high-speed fiber or cable connectivity is no longer hypothetical. It’s here, and operators in every market are investing in expanding their FWA footprint. As they do though, more and more discover that FWA alone, even with 5G, can’t deliver the consistently high quality and reliability their subscribers demand. To get FWA right—for residential customers but especially for enterprises—CSPs need more flexible, distributed network traffic-handling intelligence. They need software-defined wide-area networks (SD-WAN).

Delivering Performance on Par with Wired Broadband

The incremental technology evolution that’s made cellular networks so reliable and performant over the last decade-plus is too extensive to detail here. But the key innovation that made FWA such a compelling business opportunity has to be 5G.

Early FWA efforts tended to max out at about 50 Mbps. This is comparable to the cheapest wireline options, but it’s not enough for many modern residences with 4K TVs and an average of 17 connected devices. And while such connections can support a few limited enterprise use cases, they’re simply not viable for businesses seeking primary or secondary connectivity for critical branch and edge applications. With 5G, most of those limitations disappear. 5G radios enable FWA deployments to deliver Gigabit speeds comparable to fiber or cable networks, including supporting households using hundreds of Gigabits per month.

By clearing these technical hurdles, 5G FWA unlocks a wide range of benefits for CSPs. Operators can monetize 5G network investments by moving into or expanding residential broadband business, offering subscribers an attractive alternative to wired connectivity. They can grow their subscriber footprint (and even replace aging cable infrastructure) with much lower capital expenditure (CapEx) compared to laying new fiber. In the enterprise market, the opportunity gets even more interesting. Now, operators can offer businesses a real alternative for primary or secondary branch and edge connectivity. They can also use FWA to complement existing wired access and boost network performance and reliability—enabling more stringent (and profitable) service-level agreements (SLAs). 

It adds up to a huge opportunity, and CSPs worldwide are racing to capitalize. According to GSMA, 131 operators across 64 markets launched FWA services in 2024. Overall, the industry group forecasts that by 2030, the number of 5G FWA connections will increase by 358%, reaching more than 79 million connections. 

Getting FWA Right

As exciting as the FWA opportunity is for CSPs, many early leaders have realized that even with 5G capacity and throughput, they still struggle to consistently deliver the high quality of experience (QoE) their subscribers expect. 5G FWA on its own is just not enough to assure wireline-comparable quality across every subscriber session, much less meet enterprise SLAs for reliability, throughput, and latency. Delivering a consistently great FWA experience, especially for enterprise customers, requires an extra layer of traffic-handling intelligence and the ability to manage spectrum, capacity, load, and usage in real time.

Fortunately, CSPs already have a solution perfectly suited to meeting these kinds of real-time network requirements at the edge: SD-WAN. And no one is better positioned than service providers to exploit SD-WAN to deliver superior FWA experiences.

By using SD-WAN intelligence across residential fixed broadband deployments, operators can deliver consumer experiences on par with premium cable and fiber connections, while maximizing network resources. And by combining SD-WAN and FWA within a unified branch solution, operators can offer enterprises a highly attractive new connectivity option for primary or secondary access at the edge. They can combine FWA with wired broadband, satellite, and other connectivity options into a converged branch or edge solution that can meet specialized performance and reliability requirements, all optimized with dynamic SD-WAN intelligence.

FWA and VeloCloud SD-WAN: a Winning Combination

As the provider of the world’s leading SD-WAN solution, VeloCloud SD-WAN, Broadcom is helping CSPs make the most of the FWA opportunity. VeloCloud SD-WAN provides the ideal platform for delivering superior FWA services. With VeloCloud, CSPs can: 

Together, these capabilities give CSPs a comprehensive solution to rapidly deploy, manage, and optimize FWA for residential and enterprise customers. Organizations around the world already use VeloCloud SD-WAN to achieve business-class connectivity and QoE over less reliable network links. In fact, we’ve already transformed more than 1 million consumer-grade circuits into enterprise-class networks. Every day, more than 60,000 organizations rely on VeloCloud to provide branch and edge sites with high-performance, reliable, and secure access to their most important cloud and AI applications. We’re ready to help operators bring the same experience to FWA.

It may have taken the industry a while to get here. But with 5G fixed broadband and real-time traffic-handling solutions like VeloCloud SD-WAN, the age of wireless broadband that’s every bit as good as wired has finally arrived.