Whitepaper So fibre is the route to take here. But as the conclusion from McKinsey that fibre deployment is a business model that does “not as yet work everywhere” warns us, it’s a direction of travel that not everyone wants to take yet. There is another factor in play that needs including in this discussion. So far, we’ve been talking mainly about how 5G needs fibre for ensuring connectivity to the masses of small and other cells required to deliver coverage. But 5G also changes the way we utilise optical connectivity. That is, it brings us new questions regarding front-, back- and mid-haul - collectively known as ‘x-‘ haul. In mobile networks, fibre has traditionally been used primarily for “backhaul”—that’s to say, aggregating traffic from macrocells and transferring it to t

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