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posted by cmn32480 on Friday August 28 2015, @09:38AM   Printer-friendly
from the it'll-still-cost-too-much dept.

A plan to use Wi-Fi airwaves for cellular service has sparked concerns about interference with existing Wi-Fi networks, causing a fight involving wireless carriers, cable companies, a Wi-Fi industry trade group, Microsoft, and network equipment makers.

Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile US plan to boost coverage in their cellular networks by using unlicensed airwaves that also power Wi-Fi equipment. While cellular carriers generally rely upon airwaves to which they have exclusive licenses, a new system called LTE (Long-Term Evolution)-Unlicensed (LTE-U) would have the carriers sharing spectrum with Wi-Fi devices on the unlicensed 5GHz band.

Verizon has said it intends to deploy LTE-U in 5GHz in 2016. Before the interference controversy threatened to delay deployments, T-Mobile was expected to use the technology on its smartphones by the end of 2015. Wireless equipment makers like Qualcomm see an opportunity to sell more devices and are integrating LTE-U into their latest technology.

Is this a blessing for cell phone users, a curse for those who have to manage wifi networks, or a move that could backfire on telecommunication companies as cell service-over-wifi becomes ubiquitous and threatens their network advantage?


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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @10:31AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @10:31AM (#228923)

    The one way our customers still have to not pay extortionate rates for data used by their mobile devices is to use a WiFi connection instead.

    Let's take that loophole in our profits away!

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  • (Score: 2) by zocalo on Friday August 28 2015, @10:59AM

    by zocalo (302) on Friday August 28 2015, @10:59AM (#228927)
    Not following their logic here. I suspect the "base stations" for this will actually be their customer's CPE routers which would already be very likely to be running WiFi anyway, so why not just piggy back on the WiFi using a separate VLAN and SSID and bill their customers based on MB used? Trying to create a totally separate service in an already congested spectrum is just going to mean two services that are both crap, and twice as many customers complaining about the crap service. Race to the bottom indeed...
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    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by MrGuy on Friday August 28 2015, @11:34AM

      by MrGuy (1007) on Friday August 28 2015, @11:34AM (#228936)

      We have a customer of a mobile service who is in range of a WiFi router. They want to send/receive data.

      If the data is sent over WiFi, the customer owes nothing to their mobile carrier.

      If the data is sent over LTE, then they pay the mobile carrier for the bandwidth.

      Suddenly, data sent over the same spectrum using (as you point out) likely the EXACT SAME HARDWARE, carried over the exact same backbone network, becomes potentially subject to charge because it's being transmitted using a different protocol.

      This feels like a land grab. We're upset there's a way to get data we can't charge for, so let's crowd the spectrum with our chargable service, even though it offers no added value to consumers, because then we make more money.

      • (Score: 2) by zocalo on Friday August 28 2015, @12:37PM

        by zocalo (302) on Friday August 28 2015, @12:37PM (#228952)
        Oh yes, I get that. What I'm baffled over is why they are looking into this approach and cluttering up the airwaves instead of simply setting up a billable WiFi based voice service on a parallel SSID & VLAN. Combine that with configuring their customer's mobile devices to prefer their SSID when available in preference to others and they'd potentially pick up a lot of traffic that might otherwise have roamed to free WiFi as well. It doesn't just stink of a landgrab to me, it stinks of being a blatent attempt to piss in the pool of a competing technology as well, and all of it at their customer's expense - in both dollars and service quality.
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        UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!