Fiber vs Fixed Wireless

What fixed wireless actually is

A radio link between your roof and a carrier tower or a nearby building. No trench, no permits, no waiting on a construction crew.

Two very different products share the name. Licensed microwave delivered by a regional wireless ISP can be genuinely enterprise grade with an SLA. Consumer style 5G home internet resold to businesses is not the same thing.

The case for wireless

• Speed of deployment. Days, not months. This is the whole reason it exists.
• It reaches buildings fiber has not, especially industrial parks and rural sites.
• It is genuinely path diverse. A fiber cut does not touch it, which makes it a strong backup even where fiber is available.
• No construction charge, which can save five figures at an off-net address.

The case against

• Line of sight is required and it is not negotiable. A new building or a grown tree can end the service.
• Heavy rain and wet snow degrade higher frequency links. Good providers engineer margin for this. Cheap ones do not.
• Capacity ceilings are lower than fiber and the tower is shared.
• Latency is slightly higher, which matters for voice quality on a marginal link.

The honest use case

Wireless is excellent as a bridge while fiber is under construction, and excellent as a diverse backup afterward. As a permanent sole connection for a business that depends on the internet, it is a compromise you should make on purpose, not by default.