Fixed Wireless Access: Strong 5G fixed network replacement for the digital home

Fixed Wireless Access (FWA), also known as wireless DSL, is essentially a broadband technology based on 5G, which in future will represent an interesting alternative to DSL and other fixed network infrastructures for private households and smaller companies. With FWA, reception is realized via the mobile phone network, so that no connections for fiber optics, cable or DSL/VDSL are required. The user only needs a receiver, a mobile router and a WLAN access point.

5G technology represents a further evolution of 4G in this field of application, as LTE in combination with mobile WLAN routers - such as the O₂ Homespot - can already replace the fixed network. This option is suitable, for example, in rural areas where LTE with 50 or 100 Mbit/s is available, but no or only a slow DSL fixed network infrastructure with 8 or 16 Mbit/s. But FWA offers advantages not only in rural areas, but also in cities, with lower costs - for example, compared to fiber optic expansion - and high speed. In the future, users will be able to stream movies in 8K-UHD over 5G at more than one gigabit per second, surf the web and enjoy their other everyday applications in top quality.

Telefónica Germany has already successfully tested the FWA technology based on 5G together with Samsung Electronics in Hamburg. 20 households benefited for three months free of charge from the wireless connection via 5G frequencies in the 26 GHz band, which was used for the first time in this project. This high frequency ultimately provides users with a higher bandwidth and better speeds. At these or higher frequencies, the radio waves behave similarly to light, enabling a focused transfer to the receiver over a distance of up to one kilometer.