Dying on the copper vine: Emerging wireless players face potential backhaul starvation on obsolete T-1s

Wireless broadband, which many see as the solution to fill in the gaps in America's incomplete "hodge podge" wireline telecommunications infrastructure, is itself vulnerable to these same wireline shortcomings, an analysis in Unstrung points out.

The reason, the analysis notes, is wireless broadband remains too dependent on 1970s era T-1 copper data lines for backhaul. T-1's provide far too little bandwidth to support the next generation wireless cell and broadband service known as 4G or Fourth Generation.

The Unstrung analysis also suggests the top tier telcos such as AT&T and Verizon will take advantage of the situation to allow wireless competitors such as Spint, Clearwire and others to literally die on the obsolete copper T-1 vine due to lack of backhaul bandwidth until the big guys get around to updating it with fiber to support their own 4G rollouts.