New Wi-Fi Options on the Carrier Front
New Wi-Fi Options on the Carrier Front by Michael F. Finneran
The last week has brought two separate announcements regarding new carrier services based either wholly or partly on Wi-Fi. First, Google announced plans to resell wireless services from Sprint and T-Mobile expanding the company’s move into information delivery. Reports state that Google is planning a service in the 2016 timeframe that will integrate cellular service and Wi-Fi. Then Long Island-based cable operator Cablevision announced plans for a pure Wi-Fi based wireless voice service that will make use of the company’s 1.1 million Wi-Fi hotspots. The service will initially be offered in the New York area with plans to expand nationwide.
Google Wireless
The Google deal was first announced by The Information and was subsequently picked up by the Wall Street Journal. Google struck deals with Sprint and T-Mobile USA to resell wireless services, in essence becoming a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO).
Industry watchers are now speculating that Google will use the cellular networks in conjunction with lower-cost Wi-Fi hotspots with handsets that will seek out the best service in the user’s immediate area. This is just one in a series of moves by Google to get more involved in delivering rather than just creating information.
First came Google Fiber, the company’s plan to provide fiber-based network access in a number of cities. The service is currently installed in Kansas City, Austin, and Provo, with potential plans for deployments in nine other cities including Atlanta, Phoenix, and San Jose. The company is also investing in Project Loon, a plan to provide wireless Internet service using ultra-high-altitude balloons or possibly unmanned aerial vehicles. The idea of using high-altitude balloons as a wireless platform has been around since the 1990s, but Google seems to be intent on taking it beyond the “wishful thinking” phase.
Google recently petitioned the FCC to open up a band of radio frequencies above 24 GHz to be used to provide the service. That band has been used for point-to-point microwave transmissions that are less demanding, but advances in radio technology may now make them usable for mobile communications as well.
Of course Google may discover that providing a retail wireless service requires a real dedication to customer service, an area that Google isn’t known for. Most of Google’s other offerings can get by on self service, but wireless customers require considerably more hand-holding. Web site GetHuman gives Google’s customer service number (i.e. 650-623-4000 - yeah, I didn’t know they had one either) a ranking of 1.7 out of 5.
Cablevision’s Freewheel
Cablevision’s wireless offering is interesting to me, because they happen to be my cable company (as well as my Internet and business phone provider). While only the eighth largest cable company in the US with about 3 million lines (Comcast is first with 23 million), Cablevision has long been one of the primary drivers for new technologies in the cable industry. Cablevision was one of the first operators in the country to rollout cable modem service and followed that with cable voice service. They also the pioneered network-based DVR, including taking on the legal battle that ensued. Finally, the company also has deployed 1.1 million Wi-Fi hotspots and was a founding partner in the CableWiFi consortium.
The new wireless service Cablevision announced is dubbed Freewheel, and will offer unlimited data, talk and text to Cablevision customers for $9.95 per month; the price for non-customers will be $29.95 per month. Unfortunately it will support only one model device, the Moto G, which it will sell for $99.95. It will be interesting to see if the company can come up with an iPhone offering. The service will leverage the company’s public hot spots, but there is talk of dual SSID home-based hot spots.
Cablevision is not the first to offer Wi-Fi or Wi-Fi/cellular voice services. Back in 2012, I wrote about a company called Republic Wireless that was offering unlimited voice, data and text for $19 per month on a combined Wi-Fi/cellular network. The catch is that they can boot you off the network if too much of your usage winds up on cellular. Another carrier called Scratch Wireless is offering a free voice, data and text over Wi-Fi service and sells cellular voice and data “passes” if you need cellular connectivity. That service uses the Motorola Photon Q handset.
We have also been tracking a company called Devicescape, that is putting together what they call a “Curated Virtual Network.” Their business plan is to locate as many open Wi-Fi hot spots as they can and provide software that would let devices join them automatically. Their software even works with hot spots that require the user to accept terms.
Will This Work For Business Users?
These services are clearly targeted towards consumers but could they be suitable for business users? With business users, “productivity” needs “connectivity,” and it will be extremely challenging to do this with Wi-Fi. Where a single cell tower could cover tens of square miles, a single hot spot covers a few thousand square feet. If the user is not within range of an available hot spot, they are essentially “disconnected” and their incoming calls are going to voicemail.
Further, if it’s a Wi-Fi-only offering, we have had problems with hand-offs, so you may have to stay stationary to ensure your connection doesn’t drop. And you can probably forget having any acceptable service in a moving vehicle. While we do have a QoS capability for Wi-Fi (i.e. IEEE 802.11e/Wi-Fi Multi Media), it’s not clear if any of these offerings will be using it.
In short, these new Wi-Fi optimized services are appealing, and can probably offer better data performance than LTE, but enterprise customers will likely be more satisfied with those that include a cellular safety net.
Conclusion - Good News For Buyers
What these new options do is keep pressure on the mobile operators, which should lead to lower prices and better services. This is not good news for the operators who are being squeezed on one side by these lower-priced competitors and on the other by the need to continue to invest heavily to acquire spectrum and build out their 4G LTE networks. The response from the mobile operators has been data plans that come with unlimited talk and text and pooled data plans that are catching on with both consumers and enterprises. I recently worked on a project with one client where a pooled plan resulted in savings of over 40% on their monthly cellular bills.
We will be talking a lot about these new offerings on the mobility track at Enterprise Connect next month, including a session specifically on the challenges of getting real time UC services like Microsoft’s Lync/Skype for Business to work on Wi-Fi.
Hope to see you there.