Why not cellular over WiFi??
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WiFi technologies are being used innovatively in new applications and services, such as providing free public WiFi access via garbage bins, phone booths, and solar-powered access points. However, cellular networks also have capabilities to match many of WiFi's innovations through technologies like machine-to-machine communication, broadcast information, and carrier aggregation to provide high speeds. While WiFi is widely available and used for indoor services, cellular networks need to improve indoor coverage and develop business solutions to remain competitive with WiFi in an increasingly connected world.
Why not cellular over WiFi??
- 1. “Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell.” –Seth Godin This quote goes perfectly for recent developments, we are seeing for enormous use cases coming up with WiFi access technologies, take example of big belly WiFi equipped Garbage boxes to phone booth equipped with free WiFi. Around the globe people are coming up with many innovative deployments one such example is solar panel driven WiFi access points. Here we come! Recent times have been reading a lot about services related to WiFi aware, beacon advertisement, VoWiFi, WiFi first and the most amazing fact is big giants like “Google", “Microsoft” are also cashing in this big time. Another great example of deployment and getting the juice out WiFi (actually the foot print of WiFi) is Telstra Air, you earn credits if you let your home WiFi turn into a Telstra Hotspot and you can use your credits to use someone’s WiFi hotspot (if I understood it correctly). WiFi community and deployments have not only achieved tremendous foot print and user base indoors but they are going strongly towards what is called WiFi as primary technology. Then why not cellular? What cellular has in offering? If I try to think, cellular is lacking in selling their part stories, and one reason is choosing WiFi as offloading/traffic steering technology. It’s kind of going against the cellular, they achieve indoor coverage, they offload traffic, they get more capacity and then they also get users trusting more on WiFi and especially when WiFi is coming strongly with technologies to meet every expectation like Voice and security. Coming back to offerings cellular always was preferred because of availability, mobility and customer data demands, all these have increased many folds in recent times. If you observe your phone WiFi is common and is available in every device even tablets and laptops offer WiFi cards but not so commonly the cellular simcards. In a way WiFi works on almost every device but not the cellular (just from indoor services point of view) then why wouldn't I switch to WiFi when I don’t have an Ethernet connection. Cellular has all the solutions to provide the same “stories” and “innovative ideas” which WiFi is selling.
- 2. Machine to machine communication can match WiFi aware, Broadcasting the information can match the beacon advertisement, along with proximity sensors. In fact it will make sure the broadcast is controlled, it happens in a managed way. Speed I don’t consider 1Gbps as of now as requirement for mobile devices, but yes Carrier aggregation can provide the same experience, Indoor penetration, Cellular need to come up with better use cases to even stand a chance, Plug and play devices, better prices enterprise business plans/proposals. With IoT coming in more devices, more data, and more traffic cellular schedulers stands a perfect change with QoS and managing the load better with better solutions for mitigate interference and load balancing. From users perspective too few features such as DRX mode helps saving battery with cellular. WiFi is getting deployed everywhere, today's integration with 3GPP with operators are popular with the “ UNTRUSTED format” , only because operators get built in access points to reach out users with whatever call model they design, Again nothing wrong in doing this. Deploying thousands to WiFi seems to be a better priced solution currently but when we have more and more, how will they all perform? What happens to QoS, throughput, interference management and most importantly managing all those APs? Although, I am big supporter of WiFi offerings, I am among those, who uses cellular as Gap filler currently from office to home. But isn’t it important to hold on and sneak into the future where we are heading to? Management is very important and critical, it is like making every citizen a police officer thinking that there won’t be any crime but is it so? Considering the hype of beacons advertisement sooner we will have a DND (do not disturb) service or app on our smart phone for only beacons. At last, small cells / LTE-U all can be used again not saying alone but alongside WiFi to provide better capacity, coverage, and user experience and managed network. WiFi needs to come up with better interference management and large density of AP, I guess they might have already realized this by now with LTEU/LAA. It is a high time for operators to define the strategy for the future. Till now everyone is trying to figure out the use case for LTEU but I am sure with IoT, connected cars etc. concept we may witness matured and better version of Device to Device/Machine to Machine services and utilization of LTEU which will be managed by licensed network.