Smartphone and tablet use is booming and mobile data is growing at exponential rates. Cisco recently published its Visual Networking Index (VNI), which found that mobile data traffic grew by 81 per cent in 2013 alone. The same report predicted that mobile data traffic will increase a further 11-fold between now and 2018, with more than 15 exabytes of data expected to be transferred through mobile networks each month.
2013 saw unprecedented levels of investment in the deployment of public Wi-Fi. This rapid expansion of Wi-Fi is being fuelled by a growing acceptance of the vital role it has to play in the future of wireless communications.
The role of Wi-Fi
The term Wi-Fi has been around for a little over 13 years now and during that time, its capabilities and applied uses have evolved rapidly. From short range access points in homes and businesses through to high range wireless mesh networks blanketing entire cities, Wi-Fi has morphed from a high tech convenience into one of the most disruptive communication technologies of a generation.
Public Wi-Fi installations were, for the longest time, nothing more than isolated hotspots – deployed as an additional convenience to customers or a supplementary revenue stream to businesses.
However, the explosion in mobile data usage has caused network providers to explore new ways of meeting the demands of users and it is here that Wi-Fi is once again providing a solution.
Data offload strategies and beyond…
Wi-Fi provides a high-bandwidth, low-cost solution which is set to revolutionise the mobile data landscape. Rather than two disparate technologies – i.e. hotspots and cellular networks, Wi-Fi is now becoming a core component of the mobile ecosystem.
By offloading data from the cellular network onto Wi-Fi and other small cell networks, carriers will be able to effectively manage the onslaught of traffic they can expect in the coming years. In the near to mid-term, it is these data offload strategies that will continue driving investment in public Wi-Fi deployments, however, data offload is not the end of the story.
Steady progress is being made with the Wireless Broadband Alliance’s Next Generation Hotspot (NGH) initiative, which – alongside the Passpoint certification programme (Wi-Fi Alliance) – will usher in a new era of wireless data capabilities.
Rather than simply offloading traffic onto self-owned Wi-Fi networks, NGH will truly break down the barriers between cellular and Wi-Fi. Devices will be capable of seamlessly transferring from one to network to the other. This will essentially extend the concept of roaming to include Wi-Fi networks.
New partnerships, relationships and agreements will be forged and as a result the public Wi-Fi footprint will undoubtedly increase around the globe. Of course, from the perspective of the user, this explosion in public Wi-Fi deployments will be barely noticeable. Devices will move between the two networks as if they were one.
A new era in wireless data communications
Cisco’s research predicted that by 2018, more mobile data traffic would be carried by Wi-Fi deployments than it would by the cellular data networks which they support. This forecast should go some way to highlighting the role that public Wi-Fi deployments are likely to play in the coming years.
Of course, offload strategies are becoming a critical component of data traffic management and this will continue to be the primary catalyst for deployments for some time to come. However, Wi-Fi is once again evolving; this time it is not as an incongruent technology but as ubiquitous component of the mobile data ecosystem.
