Dave Fraser
Chief Executive Officer
Posted on November 11, 2014
Rivalry makes for a far better narrative than co-operation, as the plots of countless literary works illustrate. What’s interesting, though, is that many of the great tales of conflict end in reconciliation; usually when both sides have learnt the folly of that conflict to their cost. The story of Wi-Fi and cellular might lack the literary clout of, say, Romeo and Juliet, but that tension between competition and conciliation is present nonetheless. I was struck by this as I read a very interesting story on CNN suggesting that end users might soon be able to do without cellular service thanks to the enormous growth in Wi-Fi. http://money.cnn.com/2014/11/07/technology/mobile/wifi-mobile-carrier/ Just as Shakespeare’s famous play would be a lot less famous if the Montagues and Capulets had sorted out their differences at the beginning rather than the end, so a story that threatens calamity for one party or another stands a greater chance of exposure than one which heralds collaboration. It’s a provocative headline, and perhaps a little tongue-in-cheek. The reality is that the tale of conflict between Wi-Fi and cellular is all but over; the industry realizes that both are necessary, both can thrive and both can win. What’s important is to…
Dave Fraser
Chief Executive Officer
Posted on November 10, 2014
Recently Maravedis Rethink issued a report predicting huge growth in public Wi-Fi. The research forecast the availability of 47.7 million public Wi-Fi hotspots by the end of this year, growing to 340 million by the end of 2018. That is exciting and underscores the increasingly ubiquitous nature of Wi-Fi and its established position as a key network for consumers and service providers. Interestingly, most of this Wi-Fi – almost 40 million of the 2014 year-end total, in fact – is community Wi-Fi, which at Devicescape we refer to as “club Wi-Fi.” Broadband providers deliver it by making a small but important change to the capabilities of the routers and modems their customers use in the home. Instead of the routers being purely for private use, the software is modified so that a portion of the bandwidth can be accessed by any of their other customers. Since there are millions of domestic customers using these routers, a large network can be built pretty quickly. And, if you can somehow link all of these disparate Wi-Fi networks from different service providers together, you can create get a single, over-arching network, which allows roaming for anyone in the club. Sounds great! Here are a few…
Dave Fraser
Chief Executive Officer
Posted on October 20, 2014
The use of Wi-Fi as a customer relationship tool is really starting to fly. To pick three examples on a theme from the news in recent weeks: Numerous airlines are launching in-flight services (with a view to one day replacing costly, heavy in-flight entertainment systems), e-Bay is sponsoring free Wi-Fi at airports in Brazil and, if the reports are on the money, Facebook will be testing airborne Wi-Fi drones in 2015 as a means of distributing internet connectivity to the significant minority who remain beyond the reaches of established networks. Down on the ground, meanwhile, Coca Cola is turning its South African vending machines into Wi-Fi hotspots to reel in buyers. There are two trends at play here. On the one hand you have companies that depend on user access – like e-Bay and Facebook – pushing to make that access more widely available and affordable. On the other you have companies that recognize the importance of connectivity from the user’s perspective offering it as a brand enhancer or giveaway inducement. That, at least, is nothing new. Thirty years ago Coca Cola was giving away yo-yos; now it’s giving away Wi-Fi. There probably aren’t as many kids today interested in…
Dave Fraser
Chief Executive Officer
Posted on September 30, 2014
Although it’s true that Wi-Fi calling from mobile operators has been around for a while, it’s been a niche offering. Of course there have been all the over-the-top services, like Skype, but we’ve seen very few fully transparent operator integrations which allow you to use your phone number. All the hyperbole and revolutionary claims that we’ve seen in the wake of the T-Mobile and Apple announcements aside, I think that iOS8 could be the event that pushes us past the tipping point, just by driving more carriers to embrace it so that users just get it without having to make an effort. Kudos to T-Mo for believing in it and being able to position it as a disruption. What’s fascinating about Wi-Fi calling going mainstream is that voice is actually the final frontier to Wi-Fi’s complete domination of our “phone experience.” On the data side all the services we embrace on our devices work fine over both cellular and Wi-Fi. In iOS, iMessage made it transparent to use data for texting too. In fact, Wi-Fi represents over 80% of data by volume and 90% of data by time. But voice remained this disconnected (no pun intended) world where you had…
Simon Wynn
Chief Technology Officer, Products
Posted on June 16, 2014
Recently I attended the Telecommunications Industry Association Network of the Future Conference in Dallas. The conference was well attended and featured a combination of informative keynotes and a series of lively panel discussions. I participated as a panelist for the 5G Networks track Carrier Aggregation Across Licensed and Unlicensed Spectrum. (I wrote about this in my last blog.) Over the next few months I plan to blog about some of the conference’s themes But for this post, I want to focus on the conference’s front-and-center issue: the adoption and growth of Software Defined Networks (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV). SDN allows network topologies to be defined via software. Think of it as using “digital wires” to interconnect the network. SDN enables the decoupling of the system that makes decisions about where traffic is sent, called the “control plane”, from the underlying systems that forward traffic to the destination, called the “data plane.” The key benefit here is that ease in changing network topology. The first network area to really benefit from SDN is called the vGI-LAN. That’s the IP network between the packet gateway and the public Internet. It’s also the natural starting place for this type of network…
Dave Fraser
Chief Executive Officer
Posted on June 2, 2014
It’s remarkable how well mobile operators navigated the challenge of massive growth in mobile data consumption. For a mammoth industry—oft criticized for slow movement—things moved extremely fast over the last two years. The big shift to shared data plans drove alignment of data growth with revenue growth, while the technology transition to LTE helped improve the experience and allow faster data consumption at lower operating cost. It now seems clear that shared data plans have changed users’ mindsets around paying for and using mobile data. People use a lot more data than before and appear happy to pay for it. Thinner tiers and usage spread across family members (and friends) take the sting out of exceeding monthly allocation. Plus, it’s easy to add another device and to get more value and convenience from the service. All in all, it’s a remarkable transition to better monetize the mobile data experience. Presto! Crisis averted! As Devicescape’s customer base has gone through this transition, we’ve measured a fascinating additional fact: people are using a lot more mobile data but they’re also using a lot more Wi-Fi. In fact, LTE has doubled consumption over 3G, and Wi-Fi use has kept in lockstep and doubled,…
Simon Wynn
Chief Technology Officer, Products
Posted on June 1, 2014
Recently I’ve been following the proposals to use unlicensed (i.e. Wi-Fi) spectrum to augment cellular capacity. The most prevalent camp proposes using LTE-Advanced carrier aggregation, introduced in 3GPP release 10, where the 5Ghz Wi-Fi bands are used for downlink data, and all other traffic, such as signaling, is ‘anchored’ on licensed spectrum. The 5Ghz unlicensed bands offer close to 500Mhz of bandwidth, and in the U.S., South Korea, and China can be freely used without coordination with radar and safety services. This means that unlicensed LTE, or “uLTEA” as it’s being called, could be rolled out without having to make complex changes to the LTE specification in these countries. Other countries will have to wait for 3GPP release 13, which will handle the ‘listen before transmit’ requirements present outside of the U.S., South Korea, and China. The two main advantages of this approach are: It’s all LTE and fully integrated into the packet core, without any gateways or other complex coordination. QoS is maintained by the licensed spectrum anchor point, so if unlicensed spectrum degrades, traffic and signaling quality can still be maintained. This sounds great, but only really works if both the LTE eNodeB licensed and unlicensed radios are…
Simon Wynn
Chief Technology Officer, Products
Posted on April 11, 2014
ANDSF (The Access network discovery and selection function) has been around for a while now—ever since 3GPP Release 8. ANDSF allows a mobile network operator to define policies on how “non-3GPP” networks are accessed. (In reality, non-3GPP means Wi-Fi.) It defines three groups of information that can be sent to a handset: Inter-system mobility policy (ISMP) – This specifies which network type to connect to when only one network connection will be used, for example a choice between LTE and Wi-Fi. Inter-system routing policy (ISRP) – If multiple networks can be used simultaneously, this specifies which type of traffic should use which network. Discovery information (a list of non-3GPP) – This is information about networks that might be available in the handset’s vicinity. ANDSF allows a whole variety of policy conditions to be applied to ISMP, ISRP. and Discovery information such as location, time of day, cell id, current network provider, etc. ANDSF implementations that have integration points into the packet core can also set policy based on subscriber profiles. (More on this later.) To complete this brief description of ANDSF, it’s probably worth mentioning that a handset actually talks to the ANDSF server over the S14 interface using an…
Simon Wynn
Chief Technology Officer, Products
Posted on March 7, 2014
Wi-Fi—and its Carrier Wi-Fi subset—has become a critical component of mobile network operator strategy. Carrier Wi-Fi has undergone several redefinitions, but the next generation vision focuses on Hotspot 2.0, also known as “Passpoint.” Theoretically, Hotspot 2.0 provides a seamless connection experience for smartphones by utilizing the SIM card for authentication and leveraging 802.11u to advertise services and roaming partner availability at a particular hotspot. Hotspot 2.0 has been slow to gain traction, and it’s generally been complex to deploy. Given this history, I was excited to hear that Hotspot 2.0-enabled services would be made available at Mobile World Congress (MWC)—the yearly Telecoms industry confab held in Barcelona’s Fira Gran Via—and that I would be able to roam seamlessly using my AT&T Samsung Galaxy S4, one of the first Passpoint-certified handsets. I was looking forward to just turning on my phone and connecting; however… Here’s what actually happened. Prior to arriving at the show, I set my Galaxy S4 for “Passpoint” mode. On arriving at the Fira, my phone couldn’t find any surrounding Passpoint hotspots, so I opened up the Wi-Fi settings and took a look around. These were the two hotspots I could see in my phone’s scan list: I…
Arash Shoushtari
Popwifi Community Manager
Posted on February 21, 2014
Devicescape is excited to showcase it’s engagement services at Mobile World Congress 2014. Accessed through any of the over 20 million hotspots that make up Devicescape’s CVN, Popwifi aims to better connect individuals with the places they frequent most and gives them the ability to share what they love about a particular place with anyone else in their community. Through Popwifi, end-users can automatically and seamlessly connect to the best nearby wifi network to surf the web as they please while also get the ability to rate and review these businesses. To learn more about Popwifi’s benefits to both venue’s and end-users, visit the Popwifi Venue Experience Manager and Popwifi Customer Experience sections of our website. If you can’t make it to our booth at MWC, and you want to see all this in action, please view our brand new video below:
