The Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) programme has attracted substantial media attention recently. The government selected BT to roll out superfast connectivity across the UK using fibre-optic infrastructure, but the initiative is expected to leave roughly 10% of the country without access to superfast broadband.
One major reason is that fibre deployment is not always commercially feasible in rural and hard-to-reach areas. The technical complexity, civil works and high costs associated with laying fibre often make it an impractical option in locations with challenging terrain or dispersed populations.
Radio as a cost-effective complement to fibre
For more than two decades, radio links have been used as an alternative to fibre for point-to-point network connectivity. While radio is not positioned to replace fibre everywhere, it offers a commercially viable complement that can extend high-bandwidth services into locations where fibre is uneconomical or physically impractical. In many rural areas, digging ducts and laying cable is either prohibitively expensive or impossible due to geographic obstacles.
Radio eliminates the need for extensive wiring and can be deployed in a matter of months, delivering substantial bandwidth to remote communities more quickly and cost-effectively than new fibre builds. But comparing fibre and radio is not straightforward: many variables influence both deployment costs and long-term performance.
Fibre vs. radio: comparison challenges
Operators often choose radio when they need faster installation or lower upfront provisioning costs. However, calculating total cost of ownership for radio versus fibre is complicated by multiple factors: main link lengths and bandwidths, points of presence (PoPs), potential excess construction charges (ECCs), site-acquisition costs and commercial margins.
For Ethernet fibre circuits, charges depend on bandwidth and the length of the main link. Radio link pricing depends on bandwidth and the point-to-point distance between sites. To compare the two technologies meaningfully, you must model how different link lengths and bandwidths affect price and performance. On average, radio links tend to be about 11% longer than equivalent fibre main link lengths, and radio services often offer a wider range of available bandwidth increments than fibre, which should be reflected in any comparison.
Comparisons must also consider the cost of PoPs. Acquiring and operating a PoP involves significant capital and operational expenses—typical estimates are around £17k–£23k CAPEX and £3k–£4k OPEX. When PoP costs are allocated across multiple Ethernet local access circuits, they can materially alter per-circuit economics, which is why PoP allocation often narrows cost comparisons to Ethernet circuits only.
Another source of uncertainty is excess construction charges (ECCs). At order time it is often unclear whether ECCs will apply to provide the local access from an exchange to a site. ECCs can vary widely: statistics indicate a minority of ECCs exceed £10,000 and that ECCs are applied in roughly one in ten cases. Similarly, radio deployments carry potential site acquisition costs that are unknown at order time; typical figures range from about £3,000 to £5,000. Because these costs vary so much and may not apply in every case, ECCs and site-acquisition charges are frequently excluded from baseline cost comparisons.
Commercial margins also influence comparisons. Ethernet access circuits are commonly purchased at wholesale rates by resellers or managed network operators and then marked up for retail. It is therefore important to ensure that retail-priced fibre circuits are compared against equivalent retail-priced managed radio solutions, or that wholesale prices are compared on an equivalent basis.
Radio pricing: busting the myth
Despite a prevailing belief that radio is more expensive to deploy than fibre, detailed analysis accounting for the factors above indicates otherwise. When unknowns such as ECCs and site-acquisition costs are excluded, radio pricing is often lower than fibre across a range of typical link lengths and bandwidths.
For example, comparative pricing studies show that for 10 Mb/s services and for services around 1,000 Mb/s, radio becomes the cheaper option for circuit lengths beyond approximately 2 km. While precise figures vary by route and market, this pattern is driven by lower provisioning complexity and the absence of extensive civil works for radio deployments.
Regulatory trends also influence relative pricing. Ofcom has mandated annual price reductions (RPI – 11% per year) for regulated Ethernet products at bandwidths at or below 1 Gb/s. While this ruling directly affects regulated providers, it also creates competitive pressure that is likely to influence the pricing strategies of unregulated operators, so Ethernet base prices for 10 Mb/s, 100 Mb/s and 1 Gb/s products (both connection and rental) may decline over time at a rate comparable to RPI – 11% annually.
Beyond price considerations, radio offers other advantages that make it competitive with fibre. Latency for radio can be lower in some configurations (for example, 0.15 ms versus typical fibre latencies around 5 ms in certain measurements), round-trip times can be competitive (1.1 ms versus 1.7 ms), and radio links can operate effectively over distances up to about 70 km—longer than many fibre access segments, which are typically limited to roughly 35–45 km without additional regeneration. Repair procedures for both technologies sometimes require on-site engineer intervention, although many faults can be handled remotely.
Figure 3. Comparison of Radio and Fibre (non-price elements)
Fibre isn’t always the answer
Network planners must assess current traffic demands, anticipate future bandwidth growth and adopt a pragmatic, mixed-technology approach. Achieving comprehensive nationwide superfast coverage requires the right combination of technologies—fibre where it is feasible and cost-effective, complemented by radio and other connectivity options where civil works are impractical or uneconomic.
By combining fibre with radio and other modern connectivity solutions, operators can satisfy growing consumer and business demand for higher bandwidth while managing deployment costs and accelerating time to service in locations that fibre alone cannot reach affordably.