Despite the advent of ‘unlimited’ mobile data plans, Wi-Fi’s share of phone data traffic in the US continues to rise. We’ve tracked this with a little help from Fierce, P3, and Spectrum Analytics.

In late January of this year we posted the Q4 2016 Wi-Fi share of phone data traffic for the US (see all the numbers & our analysis in this blog):

AT&T = 71%, TMo = 67%, Verizon = 69%, Sprint = 60%

Here’s the Q1 2107 data for from P3 & Strategy Analytics (see the report from FierceWireless):

AT&T = 72%, TMo = 71%, Verizon = 72%, Sprint = 67%

Thus the rise in Wi-Fi share of traffic is from 1 to 7 percentage points and – importantly – applies to all the US mobile carriers. Sprint is the outlier in this case with a jump of 7% in the course of just one quarter. Here’s the original 1Q 2017 data from P3:

So what does this mean?

First of all, the so-called ‘unlimited’ US mobile data plans have not stopped Wi-Fi’s share of phone traffic from growing. We’re guessing that the numbers would probably have been higher without unlimited plans, but this is conjecture. The data also shows that app-based time on Wi-Fi continues to rise and overall is more than 50% of total time spent accessing apps on phones.

Another notable fact –  that nobody else seems to have commented on so far – is that the average mobile traffic per user per day has decreased from 4Q 2016 to 1Q 2017, in Verizon’s case from 76 MB to 58 MB. For the other carriers the drop in cellular data traffic is similar at least according to P3’s and Strategy Analytics’ data.

All of this once again puts to shame the frankly bizarre and misreported story that the death of Wi-Fi is imminent given unlimited plans and the beginning of LTE-U deployments. We’ve commented on it at length here.

Cellular decline continues. Wi-Fi on track for more growth.

US cellular market leader Verizon had a disappointing 1Q 2017 with a more than 7% revenue decline compared to last year. Meanwhile, mobile infrastructure leader Ericsson took another hit with an 11% decline in sales in the same quarter.

It would probably be stretching it to say that ‘offload’ to Wi-Fi is the cause of all this, but certainly the ubiquity of Wi-Fi (especially in the US) has poked a big hole in cellular traffic & profitability over the past couple of years. And there’s no sign that this is slowing down.

/Claus.

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Service Provider battle for Wi-Fi footprint heats up

By guest blogger Mark Cowtan, Wireless Marketing Consultant

Service Providers are betting on IoT for growth. However without control of the device footprint at the premises they will be relegated to just the broadband connection, and we know there’s no upside in that.

In my previous article, I spoke about vendor repositioning and acquisitions in the enterprise Wi-Fi eco-system aimed at addressing the underserved SMB market. In the Carrier Wi-Fi space, similar dynamics are at play. This time the fight is over the Wi-Fi footprint in homes and small businesses – the bedrock of any Service Providers’ business. The battle has suddenly escalated, and broadband Service Providers know they need to win it, for any chance of monetizing Wi-Fi services or enabling new services around IoT, in future.

Competition for Subscriber Footprint Intensifies

Every premises will have broadband, Wi-Fi and some kind of IoT devices. Whoever controls the footprint, stands to control the monetization of services. New competition for control of that footprint is coming from three sides: IoT devices and gadgets, cloud Wi-Fi solutions and whole-home Wi-Fi.

The vendors of IoT-enabled appliances, devices and gadgets are penetrating both business and consumer markets with solutions from building automation and security to smart lighting; Traditional WLAN vendors and MSPs are now going after small business with plug-and-play cloud-managed Wi-Fi, and third, a whole-home Wi-Fi invasion from old and new Wi-Fi Mesh players is threatening the home, and this will inevitably spill-over to small business as well.

With the right integrations, each one of these contenders has the potential to become the center of the universe for Management and Analytics from the user’s perspective. The cloud management UI provided to users could become the conduit for other services. Service Providers have an opportunity to take a controlling position with dashboards that unify the management and analytics of all subordinate devices, provided the core Wi-Fi infrastructure is theirs and IoT gateway functionality exists in the CPE (see the analysis graphic here).

Consumers want more control of their Wi-Fi: Passwords, parental controls, guest access, stats etc. and the first to give to them in the right dashboard, has a good chance of retaining control of the footprint. Comcast’s xFi Wi-Fi management interface shows where this is headed. This a good start, but its only scratching the surface of features that could eventually be organized into free and premium management packages.

Stuck With Two Wi-Fi Solutions for Two Markets

Playing in two distinct markets has meant Service Providers need two completely separate Wi-Fi solutions – One for business and the other for consumers. And if Service Providers have Wi-Fi integrated in their small cell network, this might be a third barely managed Wi-Fi network to contend with.

For consumer deployments, cost is everything. Broadband gateways must consolidate as much functionality as possible. Nowadays, a typical consumer CPE may be a 4 port switch, a router, a dual band Wi-Fi AP, and act as a VoIP terminal or Femtocell all at the same time. But Wi-Fi features on such broadband CPEs are generally pretty basic – these devices were never designed to be the anchor of a coordinated home Wi-Fi network, and therefore lack many features including advanced security and management. They could be though. They have the horsepower, right now they are just missing the software!

But now, with growing consumer demand for Wi-Fi in every room, networking requirements once unique to business are crossing over to consumer products. This puts Service Providers at a cross roads. Now is the time to step up to the next generation of managed Wi-Fi that can meet all of their needs.

The race for a Unified Wi-Fi / IoT Solution is on!

How can Service Providers address whole-home Wi-Fi as part of an integrated solution, and not lose it to the invaders, when the two or more Wi-Fi solutions they already have are designed for different needs are not unified in any way? The answer may be found by considering the implications of AT&Ts recent White-box switching trial, and the proposed acquisition of Ruckus by ARRIS.

What AT&T has recently demonstrated by testing white-box switching in its network, is already happening in its own way in Wi-Fi. Since around 2008, numerous ODMs have been manufacturing white-label APs, based on Broadcom or Qualcomm reference designs. To keep R&D costs down, several enterprise WLAN vendors use those hardware designs as is (generally for lower-end models), and simply port their software to them.

Comcast is trying to push equipment vendors in that direction as well, with its RDK initiative. There is no doubt Service Providers want more control of the software to enable features uniformly across multiple generations of devices from different vendors. For Carrier Wi-Fi, the need is more acute than most.

Service Providers could potentially port their own custom version of AP software to both CPEs and ODM access points, and serve all their markets with one unified solution at a much lower price point. That’s what Comcast, BT and others are doing and they are killing it on Wi-Fi monetization, the latest Comcast Mobile announcement is proof pudding of the value of cohesive Wi-Fi infrastructure. I expect they’ll oversell the airtime on those APs, 10 times before we know it.

Since neither WLAN equipment vendors nor Broadband CPE makers have filled this gap, several embedded systems companies who specialise in Wi-Fi, have. Just as Cloud Wi-Fi software vendors have made consumer APs fit for MSPs, Embedded software companies like embedUR have their own AP software, cloud management and service assurance software designed specifically for large-scale Carrier Wi-Fi deployment. The AP software and service assurance agent can be ported to literally any Wi-Fi enabled CPE platform and generic APs.

How does Ruckus play into this?

Cisco, Ruckus and Huawei have dominated the business-end of service provider Wi-Fi. Meanwhile, ARRIS has been a significant channel for Ruckus for many years – reselling the whole solution to its service provider customers for use in business deployments.

ARRIS’s backing, and the bonus of a switching product line from Brocade, now makes Ruckus a much “safer bet” for Service Providers. This reduced sales friction should lead to Carrier Wi-Fi market share gains. ARRIS can also make a more aggressive play in small cells where Wi-Fi is increasingly an essential component. But the real game-changer could come from leveraging Ruckus Cloud management and AP software across the line up of Wi-Fi enabled CPEs. This would ensure their residential gateways become the hub of whole-home Wi-Fi, with sophisticated analytics and service assurance to Service Providers and a dashboard for users. This could provide a foothold for IoT gateway functionality upgrades, next.

Service Providers have much to gain from moving to a single Wi-Fi solution that provides decent management and analytics, and automated service assurance, and ARRIS could deliver this. With Ruckus’ cloud management, and the Xclaim product line, Ruckus is already half-way there. Whether their cloud management can scale to consumer volumes is yet to be seen. In news about the Ruckus acquisition, ARRIS CEO Bruce McClelland said “The next five years will see exciting changes as every service provider will become a wireless operator of some fashion”. He’s right about that, and those saddled with multiple Wi-Fi solutions they cannot manage uniformly, will be at a distinct disadvantage.

About embedUR systems:

This article is sponsored by embedUR systems – an embedded software company that specializes in Wi-Fi, Access and IoT. For more than a decade embedUR has provided embedded systems support to some the world’s largest network and telecom equipment vendors. embedUR also has a Universal Carrier Wi-Fi platform and automated Wi-Fi Service Assurance which it licenses to Service Providers.

About Mark Cowtan:

Mark Cowtan is a marketing consultant who specializes in Wireless and IoT technology marketing. With 25 years of experience in the Silicon Valley networking industry at numerous startups, and networking giants including 3Com, Nortel and Juniper. Mark’s favorite pastime is helping technology startups bootstrap their marketing and get to market fast.

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Last week Comcast finally launched its new Wi-Fi First-style mobile service that relies on Verizon’s 4G network for mobile connectivity and Comcast’s own 16 million Wi-Fi hotspots for the rest.

And the Wi-Fi piece is actually a big deal. ” Up to eighty percent of smartphone data traffic in the U.S. travels over Wi-Fi, not cellular networks, making Wi-Fi a key solution to today’s mobile data consumption,” the press release says.

Comcast’s new service really does look like a well-crafted new venture. First of all, it’s very low CAPEX: Comcast will use its existing Xfinity Wi-Fi hotspot network (which is massive) for most of the traffic, saving enormously on wholesale cellular traffic fees to Verizon. If they get all the details right, Xfinity Mobile users could even climb above the 80% mark for Wi-Fi usage. There’s every incentive for Comcast to push traffic to Wi-Fi where they can.

And the new service is arguably one of the most significant strategic moves ‘from inside the home and out’ for any cableco in the world. For starters, the data packages are priced below those of its mobile competitors. Add to the mix that Comcast is only offering the service to existing Comcast Xfinity subscribers, and in one stroke Xfinity Mobile becomes a lever for both subscriber retention and up-selling. That’s intelligent.

Finally, don’t forget to throw in a sizable new source of revenue. The addressable market for Xfinity Mobile includes anyone with a phone living in any of the about 24 million households that Comcast has wired up for TV & Internet.

And Comcast has more enticing benefits up it’s sleeve: Xfinity Mobile customers will get auto-connect access to loads of Xfinity content including of course live TV, movies, all of that. This means you can bring your home entertainment preferences with you on the road. That alone could sign up a few million subs and lay the groundwork for more to come.

Earlier this year, Comcast launched it’s new & improved digital home platform including an ‘Advanced Gateway’ that (among a slew of other features) acts as a hub for meshed Wi-Fi inside the home. This means that Xfinity customers should get much improved Wi-Fi in and around the house. Better home Wi-Fi is also likely to drive up Wi-Fi usage on the new Xfinity Mobile service. And thus all the pieces of the Comcast wireless strategy fit neatly together.

But as always in business, the devil is in the detail. We still don’t know how Xfinity Mobile will manage (if at all) handoffs between mobile and Wi-Fi connections. This is an important detail for any device that moves out of the home. And Comcast will of course need to deliver hard on all of their ease-of-use promises, including support via native messaging, on-line purchasing & sign-up, etc.

Meanwhile, we keenly await what kind of wireless initiatives that Comcast’s brethren Altice and Charter may come up with perhaps even this year.

/Claus.

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Why mobile could never kill off Wi-Fi

We’ve heard it before: Tech media predicting the end of Wi-Fi. This time the culprit is Bloomberg Technology and a host of syndicated publications. But actually, nothing could be further from the truth. 

A couple of weeks ago Bloomberg Technology ran this headline: ‘A World Without Wi-Fi Looks Possible as Unlimited Plans Rise’. The verdict from the analyst community (myself included) is unanimous: Nope, never gonna happen.

It’s actually the reverse: Carriers need Wi-Fi more than ever

The reasons why are so multitudinous that is hard to know even where to begin. So let’s start here: Imagine what would happen if some 60-70% of phone data traffic currently carried on Wi-Fi networks moved over to cellular.

Mobile carriers would need to triple capacities. Even if it were possible (there’s probably not enough spectrum to allow this) it would cost billions of dollars. Add to this that current plans are ‘unlimited’ so tripling capacity would produce no additional revenue. It’s a deep red business case.

By the same logic carriers need Wi-Fi more than ever in this age of ‘unlimited’ data plans. Also note that data plans are not really ‘unlimited’ – instead they throttle down speeds once large data buckets have been exhausted.

Another salient point is this: Wi-Fi services are substantially faster than mobile data rates. This is a well documented fact. Remember also that phones will automatically prefer connecting to known Wi-Fi networks unless users actively delete such networks from device memory. And it’s hard to see why anyone would want to do that.

Recent traffic data supports the view that ‘unlimited’ mobile plans have had a largely unnoticeable impact on Wi-Fi usage. We’ve written about it here. It’s counter-intuitive, but evidence (including from Devicescape here) suggests that additional availability of Wi-Fi bandwidth stimulates demand so that both Wi-Fi and mobile traffic increases.

If you want more compelling reasons why mobile 4G or 5G will never kill off Wi-Fi, read this blog by analyst Dean Bubley here.

What about LTE-U?

One reason for renewed interest in killing off Wi-Fi could well be the announcement – specifically by T-Mobile USA – that US mobile carriers are to begin deploying 4G in 5 GHz ‘Wi-Fi bands’. We don’t know how extensive such deployments might be, but we’re guessing that they will be fairly localised. From the most cynical point of view, LTE-U is a carrier’s way to get subscribers to pay for a service that they would otherwise get for free – with Wi-Fi.

But the idea that LTE-U or prospective 5G unlicensed (yes, that’s coming up soon as well) would replace Wi-Fi is absurd. Carriers have no technical or economical way of replacing hundreds of millions of low-cost Wi-Fi networks in homes and businesses – and more larger enterprise and city Wi-Fi networks are being built every day.

And don’t forget that hundreds of millions of devices without SIMs still need connectivity.

/Claus.

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Surprising Wi-Fi acquisition – what does it mean for Wi-Fi MSPs?

By guest blogger Mark Cowtan, Wireless Marketing Consultant

I recently stumbled across a surprising move in the Wi-Fi ecosystem – the acquisition of Open Mesh, one of the Wi-Fi Access Point companies in the OpenWRT space. The acquirer, Datto is in the Cloud-managed backup business – not your typical switching company filling a hole in their access portfolio with a Wi-Fi product line. So what’s the play, and is this the beginning of a new trend?

In the last decade we’ve seen plenty of M&A activity in the enterprise Wi-Fi space (see chart at the bottom of this post), and much jockeying for position as Wi-Fi market segments have stratified. Alongside the inevitable industry consolidation and fall-out, Zebra acquiring Motorola Solutions’ enterprise business, Juniper acquiring Trapeze, HP acquiring Aruba, and Fortinet acquiring Meru, the Wi-Fi industry has also expanded with new pure-play entrants emerging as Cloud Wi-Fi became mainstream. Incidentally Motorola’s WLAN solution has changed hands again, it is now part of Extreme Networks portfolio.

Before we can answer why Datto acquired Open Mesh, and what this might mean for the MSP channels that use Open Mesh – or similar platforms – to deliver managed Wi-Fi services to SMBs, it is helpful to look at the broader market context:

Targeting Differing Wi-Fi Market Segments

Large Enterprises – Large enterprise Wi-Fi is saturated. Although enterprises are buying boatloads of APs, they are long past choosing a Wi-Fi vendor. With no green-field opportunities left, vendors are flogging a dead horse marketing to large enterprises. Their customers are so vested in their existing solution that they will not switch vendors, except in rebellion to a previous disastrous deployment or if the brand didn’t survive (Extricom, Trapeze).

Mid-tier Enterprises – By 2010 large enterprise saturation led WLAN equipment vendors to move down the food-chain to target medium sized businesses with Cloud Wi-Fi solutions. Cisco’s $1.2B acquisition of Meraki really got the ball rolling. Ubiquiti also showed us there was a significant opportunity in the MSP space and small business and grew fast with little competition.

The move to Cloud Wi-Fi rippled across the industry, quickly. Some vendors shifted focus completely to the mid-tier… AirTight Networks even changed its name to Mojo, hoping to better appeal to this market segment, while Ruckus introduced a whole new brand, Xclaim.

Rising Demand for Managed Wi-Fi Services

However, many of them were surprisingly slow to recognize the rising tide for managed services in SMBs, and the aspirations of their VARs to reinvent themselves as MSPs. Instead of optimizing their Cloud management for multi-tenant, multi-operator use to facilitate managed services through the channel, the target has largely remained focused on the end-user, not an MSP operator who needs a variety of features, beyond simply managing a set of APs for one account at a time (e.g. consolidated dashboards, universal login and billing, to name a few).

Yet, the era of managed services has been upon us for some time. In fact the managed infrastructure services market for SMBs is flourishing with a 10-15% CAGR according to industry watchers, and Wi-Fi-as-a-Service is a natural entry point for budding MSPs.

Missed Opportunity in Small Business Wi-Fi?

Small Businesses – Historically the most underserved segment, Small Businesses were trapped between overpriced enterprise WLAN gear (recurring management fees still make typical enterprise Cloud Wi-Fi cost prohibitive), and consumer-grade products from TP-Link, Netgear, D-Link, Asus and many more, which lacked crucial enterprise-grade features and management.

The continued neglect of Small Business, despite being worth over $1B in Wi-Fi gear according to the Dell‘Oro Group, created a thriving opportunity for members of the openWRT community – not just openWRT proponents – anyone with their own Wi-Fi firmware.

Using “open” AP platforms from TP-Link, Netgear, D-Link, Open Mesh and a long list of other vendors, innovative Cloud Wi-Fi application vendors such as Purple, Tanaza, Cucumber and several others, were able to augment these AP platforms with enterprise features such as cloud management (configuration, monitoring, etc.), Captive Portal, Social Login, Analytics etc., making these devices suitable for SMBs, and at the same time enabling MSPs to offer Managed Wi-Fi services at a price point SMBs can afford. A win-win for all concerned.

How Might the Open Mesh Acquisition Play Out?

So now, back to Open Mesh and what might become of them and how this could impact MSPs. As a Cloud-managed backup company, Datto has a mature framework for enabling MSPs to offer managed backup services. It seems plausible that they will fold Open Mesh support into this framework, and enhance the CloudTrax software which already provides basic cloud management and captive portal, by adding features that make it easier for MSPs to manage multiple Wi-Fi networks for their clients, and that’s all goodness.

On the other hand, this might squeeze out third-party management, captive-portal, social login and analytics solutions. Worst case, perhaps even closing the door on third-party support. Two friendly MSPs I spoke to, also cited fears about rising prices if Open Mesh tries to position itself for the mid-tier market.

For MSPs already delivering managed Wi-Fi services on Open Mesh gear in combination with third party management, this may be an unwelcome move, since it’s the applications they are already familiar with and have integrated into their own processes, that bring them the most value, not so much the underlying hardware. To continue using those same value-added Cloud Wi-Fi applications from the likes of Purple, Tanaza, Cucumber and so on, MSPs might consider carrying alternative AP hardware product lines, as insurance against Open Mesh going proprietary.

Is Managed SMB Wi-Fi the next Battleground?

All-in-all, the acquisition of Open Mesh by a company that is focused on the needs of MSPs, seems like a good thing for the MSP community, and it may stimulate other players to pay more even attention to the MSP opportunity which I believe will soon become the next major battleground for Enterprise Wi-Fi vendors. However, whether they are willing to match the price-point for MSPs that “open” platform-based solutions allow, remains to be seen, though Ruckus’ Xclaim product line, and Fortinet’s FortiAP-S series with FortiCloud begin to come close.

Finally, readers may be wondering how the proposed acquisition of Ruckus Wireless, by carrier equipment maker ARRIS, plays into all of this. This will be the subject of my next article. In the meantime, if you have spotted other “under the radar” moves that went unnoticed, we’d love to hear your perspective, or if you disagree with my assessment of where vendors are positioning themselves, please chime in. I’m sure to have offended someone!

Mark Cowtan is a marketing consultant who specializes in Wireless and IoT technology marketing. With 25 years of experience in the Silicon Valley networking industry at numerous startups, and networking giants including 3Com, Nortel and Juniper. Mark’s favorite pastime is helping technology startups bootstrap their marketing and get to market fast.

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Could AI revolutionize Wi-Fi services & quality?

Cognitive computing: It’s all about computers making decisions with human-like intelligence based on mountains of data. But how could this benefit the Wi-Fi industry and not least billions of Wi-Fi users out there? It’s a complex subject that we will be taking a concerted look at over the next few months.

The problem: Quality

Wi-Fi quality is never quite as predictable as we’d like it to be. There are many reasons for this – one of them being that in unlicensed bands, spectrum conditions are beyond the control of network administrators, and they can change very quickly. And even though W-Fi devices are usually all certified, they can and will behave differently depending on make, model, and environment.

Add to this the usual large swings in capacity demand, number of users, new IoT-type devices, etc. and busy Wi-Fi environments are probably some of the most complex to manage and optimise.

Thus far most tools to manage Wi-Fi networks have been fairly static – meaning that near real-time or even just reasonably fast optimisation of Wi-Fi networks has been scarce if not non-existent. Given that Wi-Fi quality can deteriorate in the blink of an eye, applying intelligence and speed to fix this problem seems a pretty good idea.

And here’s how AI could help

In simple terms, AI crunches mountains of data to build dynamic models that solve complex problems. The trick here of course is that the models change dynamically and hence the system ‘learns’ as it collects and crunches the data. For those of us who are not AI experts (and that includes myself) Intel does a fairly good job of explaining machine learning basics here.

So will all of this benefit Wi-Fi services? Well, it sounds promising and a few Wi-Fi companies are already making headway in this space. Mojo Networks has launched a ‘Cognitive Wi-Fi’ product that applies AI to a host of Wi-Fi issues including many you probably didn’t even know about in the first place. You can read more about it here – and if you want all the insights, Mojo Networks is speaking at Wi-Fi NOW in Washington DC this April 19.
Results pending?

But as always, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. I’m probably not the only one who’d like to see documented results on how AI-type methods are making a difference for Wi-Fi users. It’s still early days. But in the best case, AI could revolutionize Wi-Fi quality over the next years and open up for vast new opportunities in serving up better Wi-Fi for everywhere, everywhere.

/Claus.

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Wi-Fi is already connecting millions of Africans to the Internet every day. Now new Wi-Fi technology may be just what Africa ordered for getting more folks connected, faster, better – and still at low cost. 

Sub-Saharan Africa may be one of the most cost-sensitive telco markets in the world. That’s why low-cost (or free) Wi-Fi has already been successful in connecting millions of new users, for example with services from Wi-Fi trailblazer Project Isizwe and others.

Thus far, the growth of public Wi-Fi has been held up by a handful of specific quality issues and coverage constraints. Now new incremental (but important) improvements to the standard plus an entirely new standard (802.11ax) may be just what Africa ordered.

The new standards – which are expected to hit devices & APs over the next year or so (some are already implemented) – are specific remedies that build on the existing Wi-Fi ecosystem, and will continue to drive the cost per bit delivered down.

At the same time, at least three benefits of these standards will likely be big leaps forward: Getting connected faster (faster link setup), cellular-style roaming (handoff), and much improved coverage.

Faster link setup (802.11ai) helps users connect Wi-Fi in less than 100 milliseconds, doing away with that annoying wait before the Wi-Fi icon turns black. The same standard will allow authentication of users on carrier Wi-Fi networks much faster. The roaming (handoff) part (802.11r) – this has previously been the exclusive domain of cellular – will allow mobility (handoff) inside the Wi-Fi coverage area.

All of these together will serve up a radically new & improved Wi-Fi user experience. Add to this mix the new 802.11ax standard, and there’s more good news to come.

Ax serves up a host of improvements. One of the most important for public Wi-Fi is improved range: Reliable sources suggest that the range of Wi-Fi networks could double with 802.11ax. The ‘trick’ applied here is cellular-style scheduling and OFDMA in the uplink direction. The result is a much-improved link balance, which in turn produces the extended range.

For more on 802.11ax read this blog

For more on this and more great innovations in Wi-Fi don’t miss Wi-Fi NOW Africa in Cape Town, South Africa on May 9th 2017 – register here while tickets last!

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An incremental change to a technology can make a big difference in market impact and popular success. And there’s a very good chance that consumers – and business – will be delighted with what Wi-Fi has in store for us next.

They’re called ‘mobility enhancements’. Technically, these includes a new alphabet soup of 802.11 standards (802.11ai, 802.11r, 802.11k, 802.11v to be exact). From the user’s point of view, it means that the connected experience with Wi-Fi will soon be faster, more consistent, and even mobile. The enhancements gives service providers the toolbox to finally deliver Wi-Fi that will feel much like cellular – except faster, of course.

Above graphic courtesy of Broadcom Corporation.

The various new standards pieces take care of faster call setup (802.11ai), cellular-style handoffs (802.11r and 802.11ai together), and load balancing/steering (802.11k/v). Some of the new distributed in-home Wi-Fi systems (such as Google Wi-Fi) are already using 802.11r for handoff. With the addition of the other pieces, uninterrupted ‘mobile’ Wi-Fi on campuses, in city streets, and everywhere indoors is in the pipeline.

The new tech will likely also be a boost to the case for carrier-initiated Wi-Fi offload: Devices will be able to find APs and authenticate on networks much faster than before (inside of 100 ms) and also do away with the old and pernicious ‘sticky AP’ problem.

Add to this the upcoming 802.11ax release, and we looking at lot of exciting opportunities ahead in Wi-Fi.

Watch below: My interview with Broadcom’s Thomas Derham on Wi-Fi NOW TV.

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The Wi-Fi industry is famous for churning out new technology at a feverish pace. Wi-Fi NOW in Washington DC is your chance to get to know four promising new Wi-Fi standards. Here’s a brief preview:

802.11ax: Goodbye, contention.

Building on the success of 802.11ac, 802.11ax will serve up big improvements in every performance category, including speed, serving more devices, better high-density performance, even improved range – just to name a few. Perhaps the biggest improvement will be the use of (LTE-style) TDMA scheduling in the uplink, which will finally do away with contention. We think ax is going to be another seismic shift in wireless.

Quantenna was the first to release an 802.11ax chipset based on the draft spec, and has since released this 802.11ax-complaint chipset. At Wi-Fi NOW DC this April we’re delighted that Qualcomm will be on hand to give us all the details of their approach to ax. 

WiGig: We could call it 5G. But we won’t.

So what’s so great about 802.11ad aka WiGig? Well, first of all there’s an enormous amount of spectrum available for this, specifically (for the US) 9 GHz in the 60 GHz band (V-band).

Secondly – and contrary to popular belief – 802.11ad is not just for short-range, in-home Wi-Fi ‘on steroids’ at gigabit speeds. It’s a real & viable FWA option for outdoor applications, too. Some sources quote 500 meters or more as the maximum range, which opens up for a host of use cases that we’ve not seen before in Wi-Fi.

Facebook is reportedly using 802.11ad as the basis for it’s Terragraph project now being tested in San Jose City, and some of Siklu’s (not strictly 11ad but 60 GHz, yes) products have been deployed by Google’s WISP acquisition Webpass. Also read this excellent blog by Siklu on the evolution of millimetre wave.

It’s still early days for WiGig but we’ve managed to coerce Canada-based Peraso into joining us at Wi-Fi NOW DC for a deep-dive into the details. They’re one of a handful of companies with Wi-Fi Alliance certified WiGig products right now.

Since WiGig operates in millimetre-wave bands, the beams are pencil-thin, which in turn means that interference is largely avoided. Thin beams also means that 11ad will eventually lend itself well to location-based services with pin-point accuracy. The bad news is that WiGig signals can be stopped even by leaves on trees. So a lot of careful LOS planning needs to be done.

802.11ay: We could call this ‘5G on steroids’. But we won’t do that either.

If a couple of gigabits per second of WiGig is not fast enough for you, the IEEE’s already got plans for more. And by more we mean a lot more. The 802.11ay standard – which is being prepared now – will bond up to four 2.16 GHz (802.11ad) channels together, stir in some MIMO, and serve up a staggering 176 Gbps of speed.

The draft spec for 11ay is expected to be ready this summer. For the life of me I can’t think of who or what would need 176 Gbps even at short range. But hey, I’m sure that eventually, someone will come up with a use case.

HaLow: What IoT entrepreneurs may have been waiting for

Wi-Fi is already connecting countless ‘things’ around the house and elsewhere, but mass market IoT is begging for low power and extended range. To that end the Wi-Fi Alliance has created the designation ‘HaLow’ for the new 802.11ah standard operating in the unlicensed 900 MHz band.

HaLow slices the 900 MHz band into narrow channels (down to 2 MHz) and covers a much wider area than regular Wi-Fi. California-based Newracom has successfully tested HaLow at a distance of more than 1 kilometres. We think that HaLow will address an impressive number of IoT use cases.

But here’s the main reason why HaLow is a big deal: It piggybacks on an existing Wi-Fi ecosystem of billions of devices and a litany of vendors. We’re pretty sure that HaLow already has prospective entrepreneurs scheming to disrupt the IoT world.

To get you all the details on HaLow, Newracom is joining us at Wi-Fi NOW DC this April 18-20.

Go to this link now to register for Wi-Fi NOW Washington DC while tickets last!

/Claus.

The post Meet four new Wi-Fi standards changing the face of wireless appeared first on Wi-Fi NOW Africa.

A new study commissioned by the Wi-Fi Alliance projects that at least 500 MHz of additional spectrum is will be needed by 2025 to satisfy the explosion in Wi-Fi-capable devices and the continued surge in traffic. The study was produced by UK-based Quotient Associates and is co-authored by William Webb.

The upper bound of the study suggest that as much as 1.3 – 1.6 GHz of spectrum may be needed if growth rates exceed current expectations.

According to the Wi-Fi Alliance’s press release, the global installed base of Wi-Fi devices today stands at 8 billion. This number is expected to grow to nearly 12 billion by 2025, the Wi-Fi Alliance says. The study also highlights the need for contiguous spectrum so that consumers & enterprise can reap the full benefit of the wider 160 MHz channels.

To download a copy of the spectrum needs report, go to this link.

So what about LTE in unlicensed bands?

The study was released hot on the heels of the FCC’s decision to allow US mobile carriers to use contentious LTE-U technology to deliver 4G services in the 5 GHz ‘Wi-Fi’ band.

The LTE-U controversy pitting US mobile carriers and cellular vendors against the Wi-Fi community has been raging since last year, but for the time being appears to have ended following new FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s decision to give LTE-U the thumbs up.

T-Mobile immediately announced their plans to offer an LTE-U based service to consumers by this spring. All of Google, CableLabs, and Microsoft last year voiced concerns about the potential negative impact of LTE-U on Wi-Fi services.

The controversy resulted in the Wi-Fi Alliance & the parties supporting LTE-U agreeing on a co-existence test plan for LTE-U & Wi-Fi. The FCC in its decision said that “we understand that the LTE-U devices were evaluated successfully under the co-existence test plan. However, this is not an FCC requirement” – read the full FCC statement here.

At Wi-Fi NOW we’ve been openly critical of the LTE-U standard’s encroachment on the unlicensed spectrum bands that today serve millions of Wi-Fi users. We also recently asked T-Mobile’s CTO Neville Ray in a Tweet why T-Mobile has chosen LTE-U instead of the LAA version of unlicensed LTE technology, since both appear to be available from the vendors. We haven’t received an answer yet (see the tweet stream below).

LAA is widely recognized as the more ‘polite’ and Wi-Fi-friendly version of unlicensed LTE because it applies listen-before-talk (LBT). Regulators in Europe & Japan mandate the use of LAA for unlicensed LTE.

@HettingClaus @TMobile Next up Claus…

— Neville (@NevilleRay) February 25, 2017

Above: Wi-Fi spectrum needs prediction. Source: Wi-Fi Spectrum Needs Study, Quotient Associates Limited, March 2017.

The post New study: 500+ MHz more Wi-Fi band needed by 2025 appeared first on Wi-Fi NOW Africa.