While debate continues around the potential threat of fixed-wireless substitution for NBN’s business case, Deutsche Telekom CTO Bruno Jacobfeuerborn has highlighted a way mobile might actually help the national network – suggesting there’s no technical reason NBN couldn’t explore a similar hybrid fixed-LTE access product to that which DT offers already.
DT first unveiled its hybrid ‘MagentaZuhaus’ offering in early 2015, with a tariff that would give consumers access to both its fixed-line networks and its LTE net. “We had a very good LTE network… and then we said ‘okay, we believe in fixed-mobile convergence’,” Jacobfeuerborn told CommsDay following his keynote at the Global Broadband Futures event in Sydney. “So we [looked into], if we had both networks, how we could utilise both to help each other, if one network was not fulfilling the customer demand…. [such as in] rural areas where we have ADSL at maybe 4, 5, 6Mbps, [ but the customers] wanted to see HD movies at 12Mbps.”
A number of carriers in Australia already offer hybrid modems that connect to the NBN but can fall back to an LTE connection in the event of an outage or a wait to connect. The more advanced solution used by DT bonds together fixed and mobile streams deeper in the network, although the home modems it uses are still set up to prefer fixed-line networks – in order to minimise traffic offload to the limited spectrum available on LTE. The idea is that, as well as providing a backup service should the fixed network be completely unavailable, the mobile network can also supply a capacity boost to reach a set level of service where fixed networks are congested or slow.
“[If a fixed connection only gives you] 6Mbps, and you need another 4Mbps, then we add the rest from the LTE network,” said Jacobfeuerborn. “We got really good feedback on that one; people said ‘oh it’s great now – and it doesn’t really matter for us where it comes from’. Which shows, by the way, that people don’t care! They would like to have broadband… normal customers who got that [hybrid solution], where they had nothing before, were really happy.”
“Of course, you can use it wherever you are, but it makes no sense if you already have 100Mbps on fixed-line. You can do it but, to be honest, to add another 100Mbps on LTE – very, very seldom would you need another 100Mbps!” he continued. “I would say that [the customers] are people with less than 50Mbps. Mainly it’s ADSL customers who have around 16Mbps and below. But when we developed it, we said ‘let’s see how it goes’, and one of the business cases was immediately fulfilled – because people went ‘oh, I would like to have it!’
NBN APPLICATION: All of this raises the question of whether NBN could bond mobile or wireless access to fixed-line to help boost service to some of its own footprint. DT, of course, has the advantage of having both fixed and mobile infrastructure of its own, whereas NBN has no mobile network of its own – although it does, of course, have a reasonable amount of spectrum across quite a broad geographic expanse.
In any case, Jacobfeuerborn, does not see this as an insurmountable impediment, suggesting a whole agreement with one of the mobile carriers.
“NBN in Australia… could do an agreement with [mobile carriers] like Telstra to add capacity as another product,” he said. And he added that the process would not be too difficult from a technical perspective. “Of course, you will have another platform in your network, but it’s just a platform.”
Petroc Wilton