BONUS SUPPLIER Strategies for GUIDE 16 WIRELESS INFRASTRUCTURE COMPANIES effective Wi-Fi SERVICE, TRAINING, STAFFING, HARDWARE, COMPONENT AND offload ACCESSORY COMPANIES By Martha DeGrasse JUNE 2015 Report Sponsors: Featured Analyst: FEATURE REPORT Introduction Now those carriers are investigating cutthroat pricing environment, keeping As much as half of all mobile data is carrier-driven Wi-Fi offload by offering customers connected and happy is offloaded from cellular networks to Wi-Fi, subscribers more opportunities to use paramount. If the cellular network offers a and that amount is growing each day. By Wi-Fi when they are on the go. Carrier- subpar connection in a given area, moving next year, mobile operators will see more driven Wi-Fi offload can increase customer a customer to reliable Wi-Fi can keep the traffic offloaded to Wi-Fi than remains on satisfaction, network capacity and even network’s problem from becoming the cellular networks, according to Cisco’s most revenue. In order to achieve these goals, customer’s problem. Even in places where recent Visual Networking Index. carrier-driven Wi-Fi offload needs to coverage and capacity are sufficient for The vast majority of Wi-Fi offload is user leverage network intelligence to ensure most use cases, heavy user traffic can driven. Mobile subscribers purposely move efficient and effective offload. overload the network. Moving some users their devices to Wi-Fi networks when they to Wi-Fi can keep all users happy. are within range, or set their phones to con- Don’t, don’t you want me? “We’ll do everything we can to solve your nect automatically to home or office Wi-Fi Moving a customer off the network problems, and today, that’s about uniting access points. This gives users faster con- Why would a carrier choose to move a Wi-Fi with our data strong network for un- nection speeds from Wi-Fi and its wired customer off its network? There are several precedented coverage,” said T-Mobile US backbone, and lower monthly data bills possible reasons. CEO John Legere in announcing the “un- from their wireless carriers. 1. Customer experience. In today’s carrier’s” Wi-Fi Unleashed promotion last 2 FEATURE REPORT year. All new smartphones sold by T-Mobile I basically free capacity at the macro level. US now support Wi-Fi for both voice and So even if the operator cannot charge me data, and T-Mobile US has encouraged cus- for that, and even if that is completely free, tomers to upgrade to those phones so that the operator gets more capacity in the mac- they can move to Wi-Fi when the T-Mobile ro and that can be used to serve more sub- US network is not available. scribers, or it allows the operator to build 2. Capacity. Almost 80% of all mobile less macro infrastructure or to increase the data consumption now occurs indoors, and user experience.” much of that usage is taking place on the A carrier that serves an enterprise cus- macro network. Analyst Monica Paolini, tomer in a busy downtown area may not founder of Senza Fili Consulting, gave the have enough bandwidth to satisfy custom- following example: ers on the street and inside the building. “When I am indoors, in a mall for example, Adding capacity to a nearby tower or in- checking my e-mail or watching video or vesting in an outdoor small cell network whatever I am doing, I am using a lot of re- might be more expensive than offloading sources from the macro cells. So if I can use to the enterprise Wi-Fi network, or even de- “Managed Wi-Fi networks have a instead … small cells or Wi-Fi in in the mall, ploying carrier Wi-Fi. cost savings compared to cellular “Managed Wi-Fi networks have a cost sav- networks.” ings compared to cellular networks,” said Robert Gazda, InterDigital. Robert Gazda, senior director of technology development at InterDigital. Operators typi- more LTE capacity. cally need to deploy both gateways and ac- “The fact that you cannot charge for some- cess points in order to offer managed Wi-Fi. thing doesn’t mean that there is no finan- “Wi-Fi hot spots are relatively simple cial advantage,” said Paolini. But of course and very affordable because there’s high operators would rather charge if they can, availability, lots of competitors and actu- and some are considering their own Wi-Fi ally installation can exceed the cost of the networks in hopes that they can charge for hardware,” said Iain Gillott, founder of iGR access. Research and author of Global Wi-Fi Off- 3. New revenue. The jury is still out on load Traffic Forecast, 2014 – 2019: An Al- whether carriers can charge for Wi-Fi. Con- ternative to LTE. sumers expect most Wi-Fi to be complimen- “The operator gets more capacity Gillott’s research showed that LTE sup- tary, except on airplanes and in hotels. But in the macro and that can be used ports an increasing amount of the high- as Wi-Fi becomes more integrated with cel- to serve more subscribers.” bandwidth activities traditionally reserved lular, it is possible that carriers will be able to Monica Paolini, Senza Fili for Wi-Fi. As LTE networks near capacity charge consumers and enterprise customers Consulting. during peak use, operators may want to for data or voice calls on Wi-Fi networks. consider Wi-Fi offload as an alternative to Interop Technologies, which offers a 3 8'!ধ2+;,'-=-2+';>380 2!>38£&3(<#-7<-;3<9$322'$ধ=-;@T'='8@;,-2+$,!2+'9W '36£'!2&3#/'$;9!8'$322'$;'&;3'!$,3;,'89'!1£'99£@T#@ 2';>3809;,!;&@2!1-$!££@T-2;'££-+'2;£@36ধ1-A'W,'$,!££'2+' www.interdigital.com 3($322'$ধ=-;@&-9!66'!89T!2&2'>$!6!#-£-ধ'9T#<9-2'99 13&'£9T!2&6399-#-£-ধ'9'1'8+'W ,-9-9The Living NetworkT!2&>'Z8','£6-2+$8'!;'-;W FEATURE REPORT cloud-based IP multimedia subsystem a retailer, and so is knowing where those solution for operators that want to offer people are. Wi-Fi equipment makers are voice-over-Wi-Fi, said some of its carrier working hard to bring operators and venue customers are starting to look at charging owners solutions that will offer location- for Wi-Fi calls. based information about Wi-Fi users. Ruck- “Some of our operators are looking at both us Wireless says its platform detects device online and offline charging options, being locations in real-time within a range of five able to bill for those minutes,” said Steve to eight meters, with 80% accuracy. Zitnik, CTO and EVP at Interop, adding that this requires integration into the operator’s Should I stay or should I go now? prepaid or postpaid billing system. Knowing when to transition users off the Paolini said she sees no reason why op- cellular network erators could not charge customers for use Mobile operators have plenty of reasons of carrier-built Wi-Fi networks. to consider Wi-Fi offload, and they have “I don’t think shareholders would “If the operator has spent money to build plenty of reasons to be nervous. If carri- be very happy if you spent billions the network and the service is completely ers push subscribers onto inconsistent, on your LTE network and then transparent to me … I see no reason why I untrusted Wi-Fi networks, they are likely moved all the traffic to Wi-Fi.” shouldn’t pay,” she said. “But it may be that to lose customers. If they push subscribers Iain Gillott, iGR Research. in the marketplace consumers will not ac- onto reliable Wi-Fi when the cellular net- cept it and they will have to do it for free.” work is not overloaded, they are likely to “Right now because a lot of the Carriers may find other ways to monetize lose revenue. congestion is on 3G and not on LTE, Wi-Fi networks through data analytics and Users on a 3G network will almost al- Wi-Fi is a better solution because location-based services. Operators who de- ways get a better data experience if they [operators] don’t want to deploy ploy Wi-Fi for retail-oriented venues may be move to Wi-Fi, but that is not true for LTE too many 3G small cells because the able to sell this data back to the venues, es- users. A network policy that automatically business case is not as good as it is for pecially if they can help the retailers use the moves all LTE users to Wi-Fi when they 4G small cells,” said Paolini. network to push location-based advertising are within range could potentially create Voice and data sessions can be moved to consumers. an overloaded and slow Wi-Fi access point from 3G to Wi-Fi, but seamless handover “Those venue owners go back to the oper- and an empty LTE network. to Wi-Fi that is fully integrated with the ators … and they ask those questions: ‘Who “Shareholders I don’t think would be very mobile core is more clearly defined for is the user? What age are they? What kind happy if you spent billions on your LTE net- LTE than for 3G. of devices are they using? How long are work and then moved all the traffic to Wi- “It’s mainly handovers to/from LTE-WiFi they staying? How can I get access to that Fi,” said Iain Gillott. today,” said Pierre Lynch, lead technologist information?’ There’s a lot of value in that Paolini said that a lot of carrier-driven on the product management team at information,” said Aptilo Networks CEO offload to date has been from 3G networks Ixia.