To Fight Congestion, Wi-Fi Becomes a Friend

Service Provider Mobility: To fight congestion,
Wi-Fi becomes a friend

Posted by Monica Paolini Sep 10, 2009

Fights, competition, impending defeats all make good stories. That is probably
why we used to see plenty of press first on the “Wi-Fi will kill cellular” story,
then on the 3G-better-than-Wi-Fi, then on WiMAX killing both Wi-Fi and 3G at the
same time, and now, finally on LTE destroying all of the above (possibly with the
exception of Wi-Fi—that’s a variation on the theme I have not yet seen). I find all
this very boring. Every time a new technology appears, the dueling match starts
until the next technology appears. And then again.

This all misses the point. We do need more than one technology and different
technologies often compete with each other—which is healthy—but more often
they meet different needs. Would you give up your mobile phone to have Wi-Fi?
Or Wi-Fi to have a mobile phone? These are not questions that you hear people
debating. Their questions more likely are: Why didn’t my phone switch to Wi-
Fi? How do I tell if my phone is using cellular or Wi-Fi? The key issue is not which
technology is best (it usually depends on what you are trying to do, where and on
which device), but how to get them to work together. For an operator, the issue
is how to integrate them within their network, what business model works best,
how to allocate traffic to different networks. For subscribers, it means managing
devices with multiple interfaces.

This is where things get interesting and where there is room for innovation. This is where we
are all learning because we are used to deal with single-technology networks. Broadband
operators used to deal only with DSL or cable; cellular operators only with GSM or CDMA
and their upgrades. When we are at home we used the desktop, when we were out we used
our Blackberry. Now this is all changing. Comcast is selling WiMAX. Cablevision supports
Wi-Fi in public areas. Sprint has a WiMAX and EV-DO combined service plan.

And AT&T is relying more and more on Wi-Fi. The company has seen impressive
growth in Wi-Fi access in its hotspots after the WayPort acquisition. Initially AT&T
Wireless tried to get into the hotspot business, but never embraced it fully. It
was a somewhat independent service that was expected to generate additional

Generated by Jive SBS on 2010-05-25-06:00
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Service Provider Mobility: To fight congestion, Wi-Fi becomes a friend

revenues. It did not work out that way. It was only with the iPhone that AT&T
realized that it needed Wi-Fi not to generate direct revenues, but to offload
traffic and improve subscriber experience. Wi-Fi is no longer an embellishment,
it meets a need. It is a much more solid approach, one that shows a deeper
understanding of the technology and related usage models, and that moves the
debate squarely beyond the “Is Wi-Fi better than cellular?” level.

It is great to see that this more realistic and demand driven approach has paid
off at AT&T and other carriers. It also a positive development for subscribers who
are more likely to have Wi-Fi on their phones, now that mobile operators are no
longer trying to stop that—and instead encourage it.

It is only the first step though. Network congestion is not going to disappear
with Wi-Fi—or with WiMAX or LTE, for that matter. The iPhone and increasingly
competing smartphones are showing subscribers that there is a lot they can do
on a mobile device—and they are learning very quickly as usage statics show.
The brute force approach of adding base stations or creating new networks
certainly helps, but eventually it is not going to be sufficient because there is a
finite amount of spectrum available and the laws of physics limit the amount of
information that can be sent over it.

We are not doomed, but there is more work ahead. As mentioned above, there
is a need to optimize coexistence and sharing of available resources—multiple
networks and multiple wireless interfaces. New network architectures that
use picocells and femtocells will bring a more efficient use of spectrum and
increased capacity. And operators will have to find ways to manage traffic more
aggressively. With subscribers demanding unlimited access to all applications
at all times and worrying about privacy, managing traffic has become a very
sensitive topic. Increasingly, however, this is a topic that operators have to face
to improve the experience of all their subscribers—instead of protecting a few
extra-heavy users.

Now, this is much more interesting that talking about the latest WiMAX versus LTE battle.

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Contributed by Monica Paolini, Senza Fili Consulting,
monica.paolini@senzafiliconsulting.com

738 Views

Sep 13, 2009 6:43 PM Kittur Nagesh
Monica, thank you for your insightful contribution. And welcome to Cisco SP Mobility
Community!

Often the technology battles you have illustrated were created in the media, and not
necessarily in the minds of the real customers. I agree that with you that we should
embrace all these technologies as they serve different use scenarios, different price points
and policies, and evolve at different velocities. Above all, how seamless the user experience
is and what new business models emerge would be key questions.

We in Cisco pride at being technology agnostic, except for pushing all the virtues of IP! On
the client side, we have worked with our ecosystem partners to create intelligent connection
management, where the type of interface is selected based on the policy (location, price,
QoS, performance, consumer/business app, etc.). This is true for a connected home as
well as hot spots such as airports or Starbucks. When implemented right and integrated
with SP networks, the SPs can apply these policies towards new business models. For
example, Turbo Mode for business apps from airports. We all would pay an extra dollar or
two per hour for better performance and QoS for business apps such as WebEx or Unified
Communications.

What do you think of WiFi/UMA versus Femto in a home for raw data services and Unified
Communications apps. How should SPs navigate their strategies? Operators with both
wireline and wireless assets, such as VZ or ATT, have interesting possibilities of catering to
their consumers regardless of the access method.

Should pure play mobile operators partner with cable providers?

Would love to hear your thoughts....

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Thanks again!

Nagesh

Sep 21, 2009 1:18 PM Monica Paolini
Nagesh

I have been a UMA user since the day the service was launched (I used to have no cellular
coverage at home - and not for the fault of the operator, I live in a challenging RF and
regulatory location) and since then the service and the devices have improved dramatically. I
wrote a report a long time ago on UMA before it got deployed (it was one of the reports I am
very proud of because many of the predictions actually were realized) and initially I thought
it would mostly be for voice (this is an area where I was NOT right!). With the growing traffic
levels, data becomes important as well as an offload strategy on the SP side.

In a way this is a result of the improved quality of the service and of the devices. Five years
ago, if you had a data plan, you would never think of using it a home as a substitute for your
broadband connection--the connection was too slow and the devices had an intimidating
interface. Now, many people go home and keep using their cellular connection on their
mobile devices, even if they have Wi-Fi on their phones. They just forget to switch--which
means that the connection is sufficiently good for the applications they are running. This
good news for the SP (i.e. good customer experience) but also bad news for network
traffic levels. I believe that's the sweet spot for both UMA and femtocells--the operators
can actively manage how to get the traffic across while preserving or improving the user
experience. I think there is a role for both UMA (lower cost, as long as the device supports
Wi-Fi) and femtocells (in areas with high density of Wi-Fi usage or for subscribers without a
Wi-Fi phone) and this role is going to increase as traffic levels, wireless data penetration and
congestion grow.

You raise an interesting issue though--if subscribers use UMA or femtocells, they typically
use their broadband connection for the additional traffic. Granted that they pay for the
connection, the broadband operator (cable or DSL operator) may not be too keen to provide
what it may perceive as free backhaul for the cellular provider. I think that as soon as/if

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UMA/femtocell traffic grows this is an issue that it will have to be dealt with (possibly through
usage caps or aggeeements with the cellular operators).

What tools to manage the network do you think will be crucial to ensure fair allocation of
resources both among SPs and among subscribers?

Monica

Sep 23, 2009 1:48 PM Mark Grayson Monica Paolini in response to
Hi Monica

So I would say that both architectures can learn from each other!

Residential WiFi can benefit from the radio resource management techniques
defined in femto – after all the recent ofcom report (http://www.ofcom.org.uk/
research/technology/research/exempt/wifi/wfiutilisation.pdf) concluded that one of the
greatest challenges to the WiFi experience was non-WiFi interference. Residential
femto can similarly benefit from the radio resource management techniques
defined in UMA – being able to trigger handovers out of femto due to poor up-link
broadband service.

In terms of other tools, we need to make the WiFi authentication/authorization experience as
seamless as cellular. Apple/AT&T have made great improvements, but what can we do to
enable a better experience on all WiFi devices across all WiFi networks?

In the end, I echo Nagesh’s remarks; we want to facilitate the integration of
smaller cells into operator networks and offer the best quality of experience,
irrespective of licensed or unlicensed radio technology.

Cheers,Mark

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Sep 25, 2009 3:44 PM Monica Paolini Mark Grayson in response to
A lot of progress has been made on facilitating Wi-Fi accesss across multiple networks in
laptops, so while it is not as seamless as in cellular networks, it is not bad. When you get
to mobile devices, the quality of the experiences changes a lot, I suspect because much
more of the user interface is dependent on the device (and its manufacturer). As a result,
much more customization is required and the results tend to be uneven. But progress has
definitely been made--think that my first UMA phone had obviously Wi-Fi, but no data! And
as a result, it would not connect to any network that required login from a splashpage (no
browser).

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