Wireless communications are changing business opportunities for carriers and service providers. Today, we are deploying large-scale wireless (Wi-Fi) mesh networks on a new timeline. The benefits of robust broadband infrastructures offering excellent performance and mesh reliability in concert with mobility are being seen across the board. Wireless mesh networks, while considered the new last-mile bandwidth solution, are for some more than just another Internet access method.

While general internet access is interesting, critical and more timely applications exist that require immediate attention: public safety, high-speed railway, homeland security, specific municipal applications, video surveillance, industry, manufacturing, energy, enterprise, and many others. Today, wireless mesh is enabling carriers and SPs to cost-effectively extend their reach to consumers and business customers with strategic wireless/Wi-Fi services where no service existed before, or to offer new plans that include, for example, dual-mode (Wi-Fi/Cellular) mobility. With the right approach, in this large market, wireless mesh is a premier opportunity.

Wireless mesh networks offer a versatile infrastructure. Commonly thought of as metro-scale infrastructure for municipalities, wireless mesh networks are also an infrastructure for the delivery of applications and services. New business models are emerging that parallel today’s existing communications model. Carriers could build high-speed wireless mesh network headends and wholesale to service providers, who in turn would offer more specialized services to the residential and business markets.

New Service Opportunities
Carriers can use wireless mesh networks to wholesale a wide variety of service types, starting with core infrastructure, coverage areas, bandwidth and service delivery, and more. The services can be any combination of these three and also offer additional capabilities such as network management and support and customized applications.

While to date more attention has been paid to the types of offerings discussed above, the increasing availability and use of wireless mesh networks is leading carriers to offer enhanced services such as VoIP, higher bandwidth, multimedia content, and extensions of the network into the enterprise. Carriers could even offer such enhanced broadband services as backhaul cellular, backhaul data, and wireless Ethernet.

With today’s sophisticated wireless mesh networks, wholesalers can deliver differentiated services to multiple markets by dedicating specific radios in multi-radio nodes to a specific function. Furthermore, wholesalers can define virtual LANs (VLANs) per group. Networks that support high consistent throughput over multiple wireless hops (which can even be solar powered) and extremely low latency also help enable service differentiation, as does specified QoS. Wireless mesh networks are easy to upgrade in the field, so wholesalers can create new services for their retail customers—the service providers—as technology advances.

New Wholesale Wireless Business Models
Carriers have a variety of business models to choose from when it comes to selling their wireless mesh infrastructure services—and they all start with the carrier building a wireless headend.

The carrier sells bandwidth to service providers who build their own wireless mesh networks to connecting at the carriers headend (a common model today)
The carrier designs, deploys, and manages the wireless mesh networks for service provider customers at a cost. The service provider retails the services under its own brand.

The carrier deploys wireless mesh networks based on arrangements with service provider partners, who performed the appropriate business analysis. The service provider supports long-term ongoing management of the network and retails the services. Since the carrier and service provider share expenses and revenues, this is an excellent way for the carrier to better leverage its money. However, this is potentially a higher-risk model, since the service providers may be newer and not be as well established as the carrier.
Another business model transitions the wholesale carrier from offering bandwidth to offering applications on top of the bandwidth. In this case, the carrier builds out and owns wireless mesh networks, sells chunks of bandwidth to service providers, and may even offer basic service bundles. A residential bundle, for example, might include up to 1.5Mbps basic Wi-Fi with one dynamically assigned IP address, and an oversubscription rate of 20:1. An SMB service might offer 1.5 Mbps of business Wi-Fi, five static IP addresses, and an oversubscription rate of 10:1. The carrier could offer as many different types of bundles as it wished.

Wireless mesh networking is also enabling the creation of entirely new service options. A wholesaler might enhance its core business by becoming a virtual mesh wholesale provider, recruiting providers of applications such as VoWIFI, content, enhanced media, and more, and selling these applications to its retail customers. This structure lets the wholesaler increase the number of applications it provides at a lower infrastructure cost, increase customer satisfaction by partnering and exchanging services with other wholesalers and application providers, and increase its addressable market of retail customers.

Whatever the wholesaler’s business model, offering wireless mesh networking for service providers can bring many benefits, ranging from new branded revenue opportunities, to extending services into new geographic regions in the metropolitan area, to even operating on a national or global basis. And because there are several business models to choose from, wholesalers can find one that best leverages their strengths.

Multiple Wholesale Models Enable Multiple Retail Models
Depending on the wholesale business models employed by local carriers, service providers wholesaling wireless mesh infrastructure from the carrier have a variety of options:

• The provider leases the mesh infrastructure for a given coverage area from the carrier and offers the service as its own; the provider could also integrate with a municipal network to deliver additional services.
• The provider offers 1.5 mbps residential service and installs its own wireless mesh extension into homes. The bandwidth the provider purchases from the carrier will depend on factors such as the number of IP addresses served (assuming one IP address per subscriber) and its oversubscription rate. Edge devices at the home enable users to communicate with outdoors wireless mesh network.
• The provider that wants to offer a professional-level wireless business service can deploy an outdoor wireless mesh network to provide wireless coverage in the service area, and offer integration services for on-site indoor wireless mesh networks that serve a defined number of IP addresses.. The service provider might offer 5 Mbps or more of bandwidth to business customers, QoS for VoIP, and perhaps a certain level of backhaul bandwidth.
• Some providers may chose to focus on marketing a specific service to a specific market, such as public safety applications to police and fire departments, or mobile/enterprise services to enterprises, industrial facilities, manufacturers, energy production operations, and others.
• For a given coverage area a service provider could specifically focus on delivering broadband mobility. This application would deliver fast-roaming Wi-Fi mobility services to businesses, hot zones such as airports, municipalities, metropolitan areas, and even railways.

The business models outlined here will undoubtedly be joined by many others as the use of wireless mesh networks in the last mile expands and as new applications that require wireless transmission enter the mainstream. Already railways have installed mobile wireless hot-zones and are now upgrading to more capable wireless mesh networks that enable seamless communications with wireless nodes along railroad tracks—which ultimately connect back to the wired network. Another emerging application embeds wireless devices in traffic signal equipment; the devices convey video and data information about traffic conditions back to a central location. Wi-Fi enabled cars are now on the horizon; they will improve driver awareness, improve safety, alert authorities to accidents, and potentially assist in emergency services. As even more applications are created, the business opportunities for carriers and service providers alike will increase.