The big interview: cutting out cable

Jaime Fink, CTO and co-founder of Mimosa Networks, speaks to Sam Fenwick about the growing fixed wireless access market and the pitfalls of trying to use complex user equipment to allow self-installation.

Last year saw fixed wireless access (FWA) move firmly into the spotlight, with many of the mobile network operators in the US looking to 5G-based FWA as a means of capturing fixed-line business and avoiding the costs of fibre to the premises (FTTP).

At the same time, Jaime Fink, CTO and co-founder of Mimosa Networks, a supplier of fibre-fast wireless broadband solutions, says even though the US and UK governments have heavily focused on funding projects aimed at connecting the unconnected, the sums available have made it difficult to meet the operators’ deployment commitments with fibre. Accordingly, in the US, most of the top-tier operators are adapting to use FWA to serve high-cost rural communities.

Fink says: “We’ve proven that speeds of 25-250Mbps can be deployed affordably in many rural areas using just the existing unlicensed wireless spectrum. We’ve taken advantage of new low-cost wireless silicon, spectrum reuse synchronisation and interference-handling technologies to deliver these disruptive speeds. The current challenges are a shortage of licensed (protected) spectrum, which larger service providers prefer, and accessing lower-frequency spectrum to reach further into heavily forested rural areas.