Below figure depicts an interesting real-world comparison in terms of the energy required to transmit one bit of information on an 10-years old passive GPON FTTH network and a state of the art FWA (Fixed Wireless Access broadband using 64T64R M-MIMO) network.
(chart is based on data taken from Book [Advanced fiber access Networks], “Cedric Lam”)
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As can be clearly seen, even using the best state-of-the-art wireless broadband system, the energy required to transmit one bit
of information wirelessly is still almost two orders of magnitude worse (or in other words nearly 70 times bigger!) than that required for an FTTH system which is more than 10 year old! -
Such Energy saving will positively translate in operator’s OPEX expenditure (lower energy bills), and would also be a good choice for operators in countries suffering from chronic energy deficits!
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This up-side should be considered together with fact that FTTH provides a rather stable and guaranteed QoS at the minimum energy requirements!.
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But, with that being said, I think its rather unfair to just compare these two technologies on an apple-to-apple basis to determine which is better! Both are important (wireless systems solves a completely different problem of “mobility and on the move connectivity!”)
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