Wireless Carriers' Transport Network Alternatives and Economic Considerations

Due to rapid traffic growth caused by new subscriptions and emerging bandwidth-hungry applications, wireless carriers are facing a task to upgrade their transport capabilities to avoid enormous spending in leasing point-to- point services or dedicated rings. This article reviews four transport alternatives and a case study that explores the economic crossover points of the four approaches. We then present some price sensitivity to the case study to confirm the trend of the advantageous build-based approaches over leasing ones. The article also provides a methodology in migrating a lease-based transport network to a build-based one and investigates the economic benefits of the migration.