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: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @09:41AM
Oh hell no. If you're going to run LTE at Wi-Fi frequencies, why not just use WiMax?
I'm sitting on a WiMax connection operating at 2.6 GHz, and let me tell you, building penetration at this frequency has always been poor. Indoors the device will only establish a connection in the attic, anywhere else indoors it tries and fails to connect, and it loses its signal completely in the basement. Now personally I'm not complaining because over the years I have learned to live with the limitation and I'm perfectly happy with it, but I can imagine that most people would not be pleased.
I also have an LTE connection operating on band 12 at 700 MHz, by imminent necessity because Sprint will shut off WiMax in November and LTE is The Future(!). LTE doesn't have the same building penetration issues as WiMax, for now, because LTE operates at lower frequencies than Wi-Fi and WiMax. But it sure would be dumb if LTE wins the 4G competition only to adopt the same frequencies as WiMax and suffer the same problems that made WiMax a failure.
(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!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by daaelar on Friday August 28 2015, @11:44AM
What are hobby projects supposed to use now that commercial entities have all but rendered useless the unlicensed bands?
(Score: 3, Touché) by Snow on Friday August 28 2015, @03:04PM
Crank up the gain!
(Score: 2) by Geezer on Friday August 28 2015, @03:14PM
I like your thinking.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VortexCortex on Friday August 28 2015, @11:44AM
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?
None of the above. It's a nifty hack that allows "cellular" crackers to "break" more expensive things using cheap WIFI devices with modded firmware rather than a pricey software defined radio.
The real threat to "cell" service over wifi will be the mesh network -- Which is just another excuse to re-invent the telegraph again (see also: Teletype, Packet Radio, E-Mail, Fidonet, IRC, SMS, etc.
The humans were easy to subjugate. We simply locked them into a message loop: Text -> Voice -> Video -> ["invent" or "embed" new protocol and repeat].
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Friday August 28 2015, @04:24PM
Well it seems like a pretty good plan to effectively jam wifi mesh networks. Spread so much noise on their bandwidth that the mesh network becomes unusable.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 30 2015, @10:40AM
I don't think wifi mesh networks will ever be practical for most people. The latency will generally be too high and the bandwidth too low. It could possibly work for some communities, but not for general usage. I shouldn't think the carriers will be worried about mesh networks. If there is an ulterior motive beyond just trying to grab some more spectrum for free, them it is more likely to be make wifi useless for most people so they use their mobile data instead.
The only way I see mesh networks working is if local mesh networks are linked to larger regional mesh networks perhaps by some long distance mesh network, and there might need to be another layer on top of that linking groups of regional networks together. Ultimately it probably wouldn't look a whole lot different to how the Internet works currently.
(Score: 1) by dingus on Friday August 28 2015, @02:14PM
unless they're totally in the pocket of verizon.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @04:43PM
If it isn't owned, it will be... to the detriment of everyone.
Technically, these radio frequencies are owned by the government (not the people), but politicians are easily bought.
(aside: How can you tell the difference between a politician and a prostitute? A prostitute has standards.)
(Score: 1) by ese002 on Friday August 28 2015, @08:45PM
If the cellular providers operate in the unlicensed band, they have to operate by the rules of the unlicensed band. They means much lower power and thus much shorter range. In other words, it could only be used for picocells [wikipedia.org] which cover similar sized areas as wifi. The only way there will be LTE-U noise in your house is if you and or one of your adjacent neighbors installs a picocell.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2015, @01:54AM
Is this a blessing for cell phone users,
Eh, maybe. Depends how it's deployed, and which alternative it's being compared to. (The status quo? If carriers were to put up 802.11ac networks instead of LTE-U? Something else?)
a curse for those who have to manage wifi networks,
Sort of, but thanks to the propagation characteristics of 5GHz, it's not as bad as it could be.
or a move that could backfire on telecommunication companies as cell service-over-wifi becomes ubiquitous and threatens their network advantage?
Now that just doesn't make sense. This isn't "cell-service-over-wifi", it's "cell-service-over-the-same-frequencies-as-wifi". If anything, the effect is probably the opposite -- whatever interference LTE-U causes for domestic WiFi will make third-party VoIP apps over WiFi an even less reliable substitute for cellular voice calls.