Are We Headed Towards a 100 Mbps Demand for Broadband Wireless?

Wireline service providers are already starting to deliver 10's of Mbps of service and are talking about 100 Mbps---will broadband wireless soon follow?

I saw a blurb today talking about Verizon's announcement at NXTcomm of an expansion of its 50 Mbps FIOS service to all of its markets.  The service, previously only available in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Florida, New Jersey, Rhode Island and New York, will offer 50 Mbps download speeds coupled with 20 Mbps upload capability.

The new markets include California, Indiana, Delaware, Oregon, Maryland, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Washington.  The full Verizon FIOS network covers 10 million homes.

To make the change Verizon is eliminating two tiers of service at 30 Mbsp/15 Mbps and 15 Mbps/15 Mbps.  Verizon is keeping its 20 Mbps/20 Mbps and 20 Mbps/5 Mbps and 10 Mbps/2 Mbps tiers of service.

Verizon says it is already testing a 100 Mbps service.  Now this is especially interesting to me as I did a research report earlier this year for Maravedis on US WiMAX ("Opportunities and Challenges for WiMAX & Broadband Wireless in the USA-1st Edition," February 2008)  and one clear thread that emerged from my interviews with carriers was their expectation that consumers would be demanding 100 Mbps of service within 5 years.  And many of these carriers were operating even in rural markets.

The question is can WiMAX, LTE or any other broadband wireless technologies meet these needs?  Not just yet from what I can tell.  The follow-up 802.16M and the LTE - Advanced standards slated to come up next could.  And as my colleague Jeff Orr has pointed out this emerging standard could offer the potential to meld WiMAX and LTE together and drive the US and worldwide broadband wireless equation much more powerfully.

Are we entering a world of unprecedented demand for bandwidth in the 100 Mbps range and beyond and the applications those speeds could support?  We are absolutely without question in my opinion.  The bigger question is can wireless keep up with wireline?  I do think so yes.  An even bigger question is can cable and DSL wireline technologies match the capability of Verizon's FIOS system?  I don't know the answer to that.  Clearly though it garnered some criticism early for the FIOS initiative, FIOS is looking to be a big win for Verizon.