The proposed $45 billion merger of Comcast and Time Warner Cable is not the only news these two cable giants have this week. According to The Wall Street Journal, the cable industry’s heaviest hitters are joining forces with Google and Microsoft to lobby Congress for access to more unlicensed spectrum for Wi-Fi. The companies have already been lobbying Congress independently, but now are expected to join forces in a group called WiFiForward.
For mobile operators, more access to unlicensed spectrum can be a double-edged sword. On one hand, revenue can be lost when customers leave the mobile network and connect to Wi-Fi. On the other hand, entire accounts can be lost when customers leave an operator due to lost connections, and sometimes Wi-Fi is the best way to ensure quality of experience.
More and more operators are embedding Wi-Fi connectivity solutions into devices. This week, Virgin Media announced a deal to use Devicescape’s WiFi connectivity solution, which uses on-board software to connect users to a network of Wi-Fi hotspots identified and curated by Devicescape. Here in the United States, AT&T has developed the nation’s largest carrier-owned Wi-Fi network (roughly 32,000 hotspots) in order to offload mobile data traffic.
“More and more operators out there are looking at Wi-Fi as an alternative and even as a part of their network strategy in general,” said analyst Claus Hetting, who focuses on Wi-Fi offload strategies. “I believe that over the next 4 to 5 years we will probably see every operator in the world adopt some form of Wi-Fi offload.”
According to Cisco, more than half of all mobile data traffic now travels over Wi-Fi at some point, and that percentage is expected to rise. While a lot of that traffic may originate on cellular networks, much of it starts and ends on Wi-Fi networks. An increasingly mobile workforce relies on Wi-Fi for personal computer connectivity. This week, PC and tablet maker Panasonic said it will use Smith Micro’s connectivity management software to help users reduce wireless data costs by enabling automatic connection of laptops to Wi-Fi access points where available.
