LTE Reinvigorates the Broadband Wireless Access Marketplace, According to ABI Research - Yahoo Finance

LTE Reinvigorates the Broadband Wireless Access Marketplace, According to ABI Research - Yahoo Finance: LTE has turbocharged the mobile Internet experience for end-users, which has reflected in rapid adoption of LTE-capable smartphones along with other mobile devices, but it has also reinvigorated the broadband wireless marketplace. According to ABI Research, 1.26 billion households do not have DSL, cable, or fiber-optic broadband. Fixed and mobile telcos are looking to LTE to make the connection.

This is more an aspirational than realistic scenario. Radio spectrum lacks the bandwidth necessary to serve premise demand where there are typically multiple devices and heavy use of video streaming. In addition, the business and pricing models of the mobile space players like Verizon and AT&T are not designed to serve premises with "bandwidth by the bucket" pricing tiers and consumption caps.

Mobile isn't premise service

AT&T’s latest home broadband service isn’t DSL or fiber. It’s LTE — Tech News and Analysis: The idea of using a mobile network to connect homes that have either no or slow broadband access is definitely an admirable idea, but it has its limitations. Today’s mobile networks simply aren’t designed for the intense data demands of are increasingly hungry home broadband appliances — they have limited capacity and that capacity must be shared with all of the other users on the network. That’s why the per-gigabyte costs of mobile broadband are so much higher.

An excellent point in this GigaOM article that puts this service in the proper perspective.  It's designed for mobile and not premises services. Offering a mobile service to a premises does not make it a premises service.

A few paragraphs down, the article notes:

In fact, AT&T is trying to eliminate the distinction between residential and mobile service entirely.

Nice try, but it won't work.  Mobile is mobile. Premises is premises.