Todd Twete, Director of Carrier Services for Blackfoot Communications was recently featured in an Industry Spotlight with Telecom Ramblings to discuss 5G in the rural West.
“There is certainly a carrot being dangled about 5G in the market, but when places like Montana and Idaho and other western rural markets will actually see it is a big question. Those type of services tend to always get rolled out first in the major cities. But in my opinion, one of the challenges in the rural West is the ability for various networks to actually support the requirements of 5G. One issue is latency, as the routes need to be much shorter to the major switching centers. But more simply, the bandwidth requirements of 5G are startling and I’m skeptical that there’s enough fiber in the ground in rural America in general to support it. Even if you have fiber to the tower (often it is copper or microwave), is there enough capacity on a given last mile provider’s core network?”
Todd Twete, Director of Carrier Services, Blackfoot Communications