Originally Posted by
Brandysull
That's a great question actually... the exact network dimensions may vary from place to place. While FLOW may easily be able to remotely upgrade backhaul capacity (all the way from Barranquilla, Colombia) to its sites in places like Kingston, Montego Bay and Ocho Rios for example, rural sites take a bit more work, especially in a place like St. Ann which is predominantly rural in situation. Microwave links can definitely do the job of providing gigE speeds to rural sites (as we've seen in deployments worldwide). The only issue or unsolved question is if FLOW will be using the full 20 MHz of Band 4 everywhere. I know for sure that they're using it in Kingston & MoBay and I presume they're using it in Ocho Rios and Mandeville as well. Thing is... network providers never usually spend more than they have to on backhaul so if the demand for that much data capacity isn't there, they won't do it. Urban areas in Jamaica will certainly eat up that 20 MHz like hot bread (take a look at the 25 Mbit/s average speeds in New Kingston.... that's ALOT of data sessions & a great deal of network load). IMO most rural areas should just get DC-HSPA over 1900 MHz (42 Mbit/s peak) or 5 MHz of Band 5 LTE (37.5 Mbit/s peak... with a 850 MHz GSM turndown).
Of course... I could be wrong... Cable & Wireless is vertically and horizontally integrated for the most part. They provide their own backhaul, switching center, overseas links, data centres etc. They may very well go 20 MHz in rural areas too... just because they can! Not so for Digicel unfortunately.