HFCL is a trusted end-to-end telecom infrastructure provider. Over the past three decades, HFCL has delivered innovative, customized and competitive products and solutions in the high technology telecom sector, thereby enabling the customers to stay ahead of their peers. Consistently empowering innovation, HFCL endeavors to develop globally benchmarked next-generation products. At IO by HFCL, the aim is to innovate and deliver software driven Agile Wireless Solutions powered by the most advanced hardware. We recently had the opportunity to sit down with Shashank Sejwal, Senior Product and Program Manager – Wireless Portfolio at HFCL to discuss mobile data offload.
Can you please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what you do at HFCL?
My name is Shashank Sejwal, and I handle the product and program management of all our wireless solutions. I look after the entire program management end-to-end – from the inception of the product to the moment that they’re handed over to the manufacturer for mass production. My role encompasses defining the overall charter, pre-empting risks, building schedules, and allocating resources with a clear focus on successful and timely execution. I also get involved in product marketing and share technical inputs with our sales, pre-sales and marketing teams.
Mobile data offloading plays a key role in the Spectrum Management strategy of telecom service providers. How are you playing a role in their network planning exercise?
The first thing to understand is that mobile service providers offer their services via licensed spectrum, which is very scarce and expensive. Typically, it’s one of the biggest CAPEX for telecoms service providers (TSPs), especially in a country like India where the spectrum costs are high. Mobile Data Offload (MDO), or Wi-Fi offloading, offers the flexibility to the TSPs to move traffic from licensed to unlicensed spectrum, and since unlicensed spectrum is already free around the world, TSPs save on spectrum costs and are able to accommodate more customers and users in the same licensed spectrum. In addition, the cost of deploying a Wi-Fi hotspot is a fraction of deploying a 4G base station (or eNodeB) – in fact, it costs much less than even deploying a small cell or a femtocell. Essentially, the saving that TSPs enjoy are two-fold – spectrum costs and deployment costs.
What HFCL does for TSPs is that we provide a comprehensive end-to-end solution for mobile data offloading, which includes seamless integration with various industry-standard mobile cores. The solution that we offer to TSPs for serving MDO applications typically includes our Cloud Network Management System (cNMS – combining functionality of both controller and EMS) and our indoor and outdoor access points (Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6). Our solutions are vendor-agnostic, and we can integrate with anyone in the world, giving us the flexibility to offer this in a much more scalable way. Our Wi-Fi APs can be easily controlled and managed by our highly scalable cloud network management system for effortlessly managing the entire Wi-Fi network. Our cNMS provides centralized control for the TSPs for all their configuration and management needs, bulk upgrades, network diagnostics tools for monitoring and troubleshooting remotely to reduce network maintenance costs. Finally, our solution comes with built-in functionalities including automatic transmit power control (ATPC), load balancing, band steering, and automatic channel selection (ACS), all of which work in conjunction to ensure that the entire unlicensed spectrum is utilized judiciously and the entire network works at its most optimum level.
Existing technologies such as EasyMesh and Hotspot 2.0 have given a boost to this trend. How do you envisage emerging technologies shaping it further?
Before we discuss emerging technologies, I’d like to discuss how an MDO typically works. HFCL Access Points in an MDO network are deployed in a telecom operator’s network, which is connected to the operator’s gateway router over the Ethernet over GRE (EoGRE) tunnel to offload user traffic over Wi-Fi. With our iCon cloud network management system for centralized configuration and management of APs, it becomes easy and simple for Access Points to make a connection. When a user is in the vicinity of MDO-enabled hotspots, they’re authenticated via integration of the operator’s AAA server. The MDO at the AP level is ensured through Hotspot 2.0 functionality, offering seamless offloading of data over Wi-Fi. Hotspot 2.0 (or Passpoint 2.0) is the ‘heart and soul’ for the seamless connectivity and roaming functionality offered to mobile phone users in a mobile data offload network. In this way, and without manual intervention of any kind, the subscribers automatically switch from a mobile to a Wi-Fi network (and vice-versa) based on the telco-defined KPIs which can include RSSI, throughput, latency, or a combination of these.
Now, coming back to the question of existing technologies – Hotspot 2.0 has been great in terms of providing an overall network selection and quick association for mobile users, and the Wi-Fi Alliance’s recently introduced Passpoint® Release 3 takes Hotspot 2.0 a step forward by enabling roaming and MDO type application over WPA3 security. This provides better-individualized protection to user devices when connecting to MDO-enabled hotspots. In terms of HFCL’s solutions, all our first-generation APs (Wi-Fi 5) were certified for Passpoint Release 2.0. However, all our second-generation APs (Wi-Fi 6) are now certified for Passpoint Release 3.0, and we are going to support WPA3 and Passpoint Release 3.0 in our first-generation APs very soon as part of our near-term roadmap. That would mean that our entire AP portfolio would be Passpoint Release 3.0 enabled and will give added satisfaction and worry-free connection to users, with the best and most upgraded security standard in the market right now.
The second technology that helps here is EasyMesh, another WFA standard that can play an important role in MDO hotspots. It provides flexibility to the operators to combine EasyMesh certified Access Points from various vendors to create unified mesh networks within a single hotspot zone – for example, an indoor hotspot in a shopping mall. This frees up the operator from vendor lock-ins and can add even further value from an operator’s point of view – both in terms of cost savings and also in terms of providing excellent QoE to the end-user.
The foremost challenge associated with data offloading is user experience. Service providers must ensure consistent user experience and service continuity, independent of the underlying offloading solution. How do you ensure outstanding customer experience and consistent QoS?
The fundamentals of achieving quality of experience (QoE) for customers is how the Wi-Fi operator is integrating the Wi-Fi network with the core network of the carrier. If this integration is successful and it works properly, the QoE for the customer is maintained. In our case, we have already integrated with the core networks of multiple mobile operators, making us completely core vendor agnostic. This gives us the flexibility to add more and helps address the overall QoE aspect of the user experience.
In terms of QoS, it’s always ensured by how seamless the handover is when you switch from a mobile network to a Wi-Fi network, which is powered in the background by Hotspot 2.0 technology. This means that the connection/disconnection between Wi-Fi and cellular networks is accomplished in the background without any user intervention or affecting ongoing user sessions – be it something as simple as surfing, downloading, watching Netflix or something as critical as making online transactions. All of this is supported by HFCL’s solutions.
Apart from these, there are other technologies which ensure that the ideal user experience is maintained. Some examples include 802.11u (IEEE 802.11 standard that provides for connection to external networks using common wireless devices such as smartphones, tablets and PCs); Hotspot 2.0/Passpoint (seamless and secure connection to Wi-Fi networks); and 3GPP ANDSF solutions (Access Network Discovery and Selection Function). All of these work in conjunction and are supported by our APs, and they help to maintain seamless handovers.
Can you talk a bit about the requirements of existing customers and the quantum of traffic, which is being offloaded on the IO platform, as well as emerging business models?
These days, carriers are starting to understand that Wi-Fi can be a great way to decongest their cellular networks and provide their customers with enhanced network experience and improved overall network quality. It also provides flexibility to the carriers to add bandwidth and capacity in areas most needed, making it the most workable and cost-effective solution. In other words, they’re realizing that it’s important to complement their existing networks with other technologies, and Wi-Fi has become one of these technologies due to being ubiquitous-ness.
At HFCL, we’re serving more than 5-6 million unique mobile users in India per day and processing thousands of terabytes of data daily with some of the largest carriers in the country. We have deployed 50,000+ Access Points for MDO applications for these customers, making us the largest supplier of MDO solutions in India and possibly in the world as well.
In terms of offloading numbers, about 65% of the overall traffic in an MDO zone is offloaded to Wi-Fi, and this has been a remarkable achievement – users are connecting directly to Wi-Fi and getting far better services than if they were connecting to a 4G network. From a cost-to-the-consumer standpoint, Indian operators consider Wi-Fi connectivity to be on par with mobile connectivity, which means one or both are used to deliver the user’s daily allowance of mobile data. When the user is on Wi-Fi in an MDO network, they exhaust their daily data allowances faster than if they were connecting via 4G, and hence mobile data offload is also contributing to revenue growth among operators via vouchers sales. Our long-term goal is to take the results and success that we’ve achieved in India and replicate it around the world – we’re in talks with operators globally and we are aiming to be a part of some of the largest telecom operator networks worldwide.
To learn more about IO by HFCL, visit io.hfcl.com
