LAS VEGAS--Wireless backhaul has rapidly become not just a big market but a crowded field, with everyone from CLECs to cable companies to broadband wireless companies, not to mention wireline incumbents, looking to capture a piece of the 3G-4G buildouts.

Level 3 Communications is one of those competitors, and the company is hoping to differentiate itself by its fiber footprint and a hybrid approach that incorporates microwave as well, through partnerships with others.

“We provide services today to all seven of the top wireless companies,” said Edgar DeLong, vice president of offer management for Level 3. “A lot of that is long-haul transport, metro transport, local voice termination, Internet services and now backhaul.”

With about 50% of the nation's mobile switching centers on its fiber network, Level 3 is well-positioned to also connect base stations, but extending fiber to cell sites from there is an extremely expensive proposition, DeLong said.

“Today most cell sites count demand in terms of number of T-1s, and they need about three to four,” DeLong said. “At about $250 each, that’s about $1000 in revenue. To build fiber to that location will cost $50,000 to $100,000, assuming your network is within 500 to 1000 feet of the tower. If you do the math -- $12,000 a year – that’s a very long payback.”

There is a smaller percentage of towers, which serve multiple carriers, that could generate enough revenue to justify the fiber buildout, DeLong said. Building fiber to this group can be cost-justified, but wireless service providers don’t want to roll out 4G services until a much higher percentage of their cell sites can be covered, he said.

“That’s why we are looking at a hybrid solution – we would build fiber to 10% of their locations, say 100 towers in a given market,” DeLong said. “Each of those towers would have line-of-sight to three or four other towers, so,  we would partner with others that hang microwave dishes off them and install OC-3 [150 Megabits per second] radios. Each fiber then becomes a hub, and this way we can get to the 60% penetration that wireless service providers need to roll out 4G.”

In outlying areas, such as exurban or rural landscapes, it may be possible to have branches of microwave links to tie together towers in a string to the fiber hub.

“The trick is the hockey stick as 4G starts to ramp,” DeLong said. “With 3G, the industry went from three to four T-1s to five, but with 4G, what we are seeing in terms of bandwidth estimates is 10 times what is out there today. The challenge for the wireless providers is to add 10 times the bandwidth without 10 times the cost. We think the hybrid solutions work in this equation.”