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In the early stages of their nationwide 5G rollouts, US telecoms must grapple with ensuring that any 5G equipment they install has sufficient infrastructure to handle the increased data traffic it may need to support. For its part, Verizon has thus far concentrated on building up the fiber backbone it needs to support 5G service. Business Insider Intelligence

But now, the company is also planning to take advantage of a new tool that will allow it to expand where it can operate its 5G network without necessarily needing an equivalent fiber rollout, according to Light Reading.

Verizon is considering Integrated Access Backhaul (IAB) technology as a way to deliver 5G service to areas where it's prohibitively expensive to run fiber cabling.

IAB will allow the telecom to link a tower that has fiber running to it with another tower that doesn't via a wireless connection, so that traffic from 5G wireless equipment installed on the nonconnected tower is routed to the fiber-connected tower.

This will enable Verizon to expand its 5G footprint to areas that are harder to reach using fiber optic cabling. With the 3GPP — the governing body behind the 5G standard — adopting IAB into its next set of specifications, Verizon will likely look to start deploying equipment following this model in late 2020, after networking equipment manufacturers implement IAB into hardware, according to Glenn Wellbrock, director of architecture, design, and planning for Verizon's optical transport network. Competitors including AT&T are also looking into IAB, per Light Reading.

Reducing fiber costs through the use of IAB will help Verizon increase the speed and scale of its 5G deployment. Verizon's capex in its wireline unit — which includes investments in multiuse fiber cabling — increased to $6.3 billion in 2018, up from $5.3 billion in 2017 and $4.5 billion in 2016, which the company attributed to 4G densification and 5G deployment preparation.

The telecom is likely to continue to increase its wireline investment — total capex for 2019 is expected to be between $17 billion and $18 billion, up from $16.7 billion in 2018 — but it will also be able to capitalize on fiber it's already deployed with a hub-and-spoke approach, using one fiber-equipped tower to connect one or more additional towers, which will spread its 5G network much faster.

This could, for instance, allow Verizon to offer wider 5G coverage while still using primarily high-speed, limited-range millimeter wave frequencies, since it can perpetuate that signal more widely with multiple towers and cells without needing as significant a fiber footprint.

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