Wireless Infrastructure

A recent presentation at 4G World by CFN Services (News - Alert) addressed the topic “Meeting the Challenges of Mobile Backhaul,” dealing primarily with the financial justification for upgrading networks.

As the presentation reminds us, everybody’s getting an iPhone or Android (News - Alert) phone. The existing wireless infrastructure doesn’t exist at the scale we need, so we have two options: Convince everybody don’t really need an iPhone (News - Alert), or cough up a significant investment to upgrade our existing networks.

Nobody knows how big this upgrade cycle will be (“Real big” is the best guess so far), or when it will be done. All anybody knows for sure is it needs to continue, and it’s not done yet.

You might have seen some of the recent news pointing up the need for more space. Apple (News - Alert) announced that the iPad channel has expanded to Verizon, and bandwidth-intensive mobile and wireless apps do nothing but mushroom in popularity.

“Will the investment get paid back over time?” CFN Services officials ask, saying “we think so.” Is it a good investment? As one CFN official put it, “what is the chance of a repeat of the CLEC industry crash in 1998? Or the crash in 2001?”

Much of the current investment is by the big investors, which certainly lends credibility to the enterprise, and there is “minimal regulatory uncertainty,” CFN officials say, noting that the CLEC regulatory environment has shifted to favoring the incumbents. And demand is leading the investment, always a reassuring sign, because we’ve all had it about up to here with “Build it and they will come” flops.

Earlier this month TMC’s (News - Alert) Rajani Baburajan reported that CFN Services, a managed telecom infrastructure services company providing network services, announced an innovative incubator program called Trading Jumpstart for newly started or recently spun-off trading firms, as well as mature trading firms looking to enter new markets.