VIENNA, Va.—Wi-Fi is one of the factors contributing to a major shift in the wireless market, one that may ultimately lead to disruption in network operation models and service providers’ business, according to discussions over the course of the day at WiFiNow 2016.
A series of analyst presentations started off with at best, a mixed outlook for mobile network operators. Alex Besen founder and CEO of Besen Group, outlined potential opportunities for carriers to gain new revenue in the wholesale market, as Besen Group expects a number of new mobile virtual network operators to enter the marketplace – but monetization and viability of such entrants would be a tough equation, Besen added, unless Wi-Fi usage makes up a significant portion of their usage alongside LTE.
Craig Moffett, partner at MoffettNathanson, discussed perspective on Comcast’s MVNO agreement with Verizon, which was recently activated. While the terms of that contract (which have not been publicly disclosed) are not likely to be highly favorable to Comcast, he said, it could be a road for them to move to market as a wireless service provider and write off the MVNO costs as a start-up investment while participating in the 600 MHz spectrum auction to eventually move toward a hybrid licensed/unlicensed network.
“Wi-Fi has long since passed cellular as the dominant connection platform,” Moffett said. Wi-Fi, he added, is “what you roll onto when you can. We’re going to move to a model where cellular is going to be what you roll onto when you have to. … We’re going to think about Wi-Fi as the first network and cellular as the second network, rather than the other way around.”
That shift would mean a huge transition for operator networks. Francis McInernery, partner at North River Ventures said that the “Uberization” of the wireless industry is imminent, as players like Google and Apple move in with the goal of controlling end users’ cloud experience.
“If you understand that Apple and Google want to control your experience of the cloud, you can understand why they would like to ‘uberize’ the entire wireless space so their brand dominates your cloud experience,” McInerney said. He added that no company in the wireless space has the balance sheets to be able to build out the density that will be necessary for capacity purposes.
Wi-Fi monetization
Companies across the Wi-Fi ecosystem are taking different approaches to monetizing the use of unlicensed spectrum and addressing the quality of service challenges in the Wi-Fi environment.
Mimosa Networks relies on massive MIMO and simultaneous transmission, using Time Division Multiple Access in a Wi-Fi environment, cloud-based network orchestration and timing provided by GPS and GLONASS, for network synchronization that enables it to deal with contention and congestion.
“We’ve based our technology on Wi-Fi, but solved some of the problems that Wi-Fi doesn’t solve,” said David Stiff, VP of product for Mimosa. Yesterday’s presentations also included perspective from Wildfire 5G, which provides protected 802.11ac services in Dalton, Ga. with minimum levels of content filtering as well as a network that incorporates cellular design principals for outdoor Wi-Fi.
Wi-Fi is a point of engagement for consumers that can be a gateway for monetization. Mike Leibovitz, director for the Office of the CTO at Extreme Networks, told conference goers about Extreme’s involvement as the official Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi analytics provider for the National Football League and its focus on providing fans with in-stadium experiences that they can’t get at home.
“Monetization is not the starting point at all,” Leibovitz said. “Monetization is the outcome of engagement.”
NFL teams are exploring features such as being able to pay for and be directed to parking via users’ mobile devices; providing maps of the stadium; and sending a notification when the game is about to start that tells the fan where their ticketed seat is and how long it will take them to walk there, he added. The analytics that Extreme provides can inform all of those use cases, and the company’s insights are based on massive numbers of fans. Of 70,000 to 80,000 people in the stadium, Leibovitz said, 20,000 to 30,000 typically get on the stadium Wi-Fi network during their visit.
That level of density means using 20 MHz channels, high sectorization to limit the number of users per AP and as much spectrum re-use as possible, Leibovitz said. He added that Extreme designs for a minimum speed of 54 MBPS for all users on the 5 GHz 11ac network, at which point the company can deliver instant replay — the most popular mobile service for the NFL — to 200 devices in the same cell.
WiFiNow also highlighted some of the exploration being done by both start-ups and more established businesses, including:
-Connectify, which provides an app called Speedify that monitors both LTE and Wi-Fi and selects the best network for the user, and combines the two via channel bonding.
–RaGaPa, which focuses on customer engagement via ad insertion during Wi-Fi sessions.
–Maxtech Networks, which uses an ad hoc, dynamic mesh framework to improve Wi-Fi networks by utilizing neighboring end-user devices.
– Edgewater Wireless, which has developed a standard-based approach that allows Wi-Fi to leverage on multiple concurrent channels of transmit and receiver from single radio, in order to tackle the issue of interference and contention in high-density environments.
