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?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @10:31AM
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!
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Friday August 28 2015, @10:59AM
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by MrGuy on Friday August 28 2015, @11:34AM
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
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!