Summary
The advent of mobile broadband networks and services generates additional revenue opportunities for the owners of fiber networks. The mutual dependence of fixed and wireless assets can also be a factor in operators' attitudes and motivations towards the controversial topic of "net neutrality."
Analysis
As this article and interview point out, traditional T1/E1 TDM backhaul links are inadequate and uneconomic for handling the traffic from and to mobile broadband access networks. The best alternatives for backhaul are Ethernet systems, either fiber-based (such as ADC offers) or wireless-based (such as supplied by DragonWave and Ceragon), the latter in particular where terrain and/or other circumstances make fiber unavailable or very expensive. The role of fiber links in backhaul for mobile broadband networks presents another revenue opportunity for operators that have deployed fiber networks, e.g. in metro areas, initially primarily to serve business end users. In addition, as and where femtocells become a significant part of mobile operators' deployments, fixed broadband access networks will become another type of backhaul link to these operators' core networks. In this latter scenario, the backhaul links will in many (not all) cases be owned by a different operator than the mobile operator. This type of backhaul link will be shared between: (a) traffic for which the mobile operator is responsible and {b) traffic with which other service providers (including but not limited to the owner of the fixed access facilities) are concerned. Under these circumstances attempts by the fixed broadband access operator to implement "anti-neutrality" procedures that are considered to be "unfair" or illegal could discriminate against the mobile operator, and vice versa. Also this mobile operator (think Verizon and AT&T, or Deutsche Telekom and KPN) may in other geographies find itself in the opposite position, i.e. as the owner of fixed broadband access networks connected to the femtocells of the mobile operation of the fixed broadband access operator in the first geography. Hence "net neutrality" will come to involve not only concerns about potentially unfair actions by operators against their customers and third party services providers, but also competitive issues about the relationships between operators who rely in different places upon shared use of the facilities of their competitors.
