Can 5G Fixed Broadband Bridge the Rural Digital Divide?

The digital divide between rural and urban communities is a significant problem in today's connected world. Until recently, infrastructure costs have limited how effectively fixed broad-band (FB) Internet services could be offered to rural regions. However, with 4G, a convergence between FB and mobile services has started to emerge via fixed wireless access (FWA), which has made it possible for operators to provide (limited) FB to rural communities using existing cellular infrastructure. To bridge the digital divide, rural FWA must be able to provide an end-to-end experience comparable to urban FB. In this regard, 4G is inadequate, but 5G can make a difference. In this article we examine how 5G FWA could truly enable FB in rural regions. We present improvements to each area of the 5G architecture, including new and upcoming advances in 3GPP Releases 16 and 17, and examine how they can benefit rural FWA users. Despite these advances, 5G operators will face a number of challenges in planning and operating rural FWA networks. Hence, the second objective of this article is to outline future research directions in this context.