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CenterFuse Broadband Feasibility Report <br /> than building fiber-to-the-home. The expensive part of a FTTH network is the fiber along a <br /> street, and that is still needed for this technology as well. <br /> Verizon claims to have plans to pass 30 million residents with the technology. The pricing on the <br /> product is simple at$50 for Verizon Wireless customers and $70 for anybody else. This <br /> technology will compete well against cable since the cable companies currently sell gigabit <br /> broadband at prices of$100 or higher. This product should also have faster upload speeds than <br /> cable broadband, but Verizon isn't talking yet about upload speeds. Any neighborhood that gets <br /> this technology ought to see some price competition—and if not price competition, at least <br /> expanded customer choice. <br /> This technology doesn't make sense everywhere. It's a technology aimed at streets with single- <br /> family homes or rows of small businesses. It's not going to handle apartment buildings where <br /> there are units that don't face the street with the fiber. The technology doesn't work well in <br /> neighborhoods where utilities are buried and there are no poles. The technology won't work well <br /> on streets with heavy vegetation or streets that are highly curved. This technology will be hard to <br /> justify in places with neighborhoods with large lots and lower housing density, and this <br /> technology makes no sense in rural areas. <br /> I think it's likely that this will be deployed in neighborhoods where Verizon has fiber—much in <br /> the same way that AT&T builds residential fiber.Verizon is not likely to build this on every <br /> street in a city—just to streets where construction costs are low and that are close to existing <br /> Verizon fiber. This is a new technology and the only company currently offering it is Verizon. If <br /> it operates anything like how Verizon claims, it could be a serious competitor to cable company <br /> broadband. At this point there is no way to know the targeted markets for the technology. <br /> Point-to-Point Millimeter Wave 5G <br /> The final 5G technology, which is defined by the same standard, is a technology to provide <br /> highs-speed connection of up to a few gigabytes of speed over relatively short distances. This <br /> technology also uses millimeter wave spectrum. <br /> This 5G application will be deployed in the form of a highly focused beam. This kind of <br /> deployment has been done for years using the lower microwave frequencies, with the first big <br /> use in the industry being the microwave network that MCI deployed to do an end-run around Ma <br /> Bell in the 1970s. The transmitters for this application focus the radio transmission into a narrow <br /> beam that is sent between a pair of transmitter/receivers. The easiest way to think of this is as <br /> something the diameter of a pencil stretching between two antenna dishes. <br /> There have been radios using the millimeter wave frequencies for several years that can deliver <br /> up to a 2 Gbps connection for 1 mile or a 1 Gbps connection for 2-miles. Current radios use <br /> native Ethernet rather than the 5G standard, but 5G speeds would be nearly identical. This <br /> configuration is mostly useful as a fiber replacement. It's a good way, for example to beam a <br /> signal from a roof top to provide service to another building. It's a good way to connect <br /> buildings together in a campus environment without having to build fiber. It's an interesting way <br /> to be able to provide temporary service to a large business customer until fiber can be built. <br /> Page 76 <br />