Which NZ cellular providers have implemented/ will be the first to implement HotSpot 2.0 ?

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sbiddle

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#897634 18-Sep-2013 13:12

SteveON: IMHO NZ doesn't need these - we have low density populations and an abundance of spectrum.

Spectrum isn't the issue. It's the fact that in certain situations it's virtually impossible to engineer a mobile network that will cope.

Basic physics imposes a RF noise floor - that's not something that can be overcome.

Even with all the gear in the stadium in Wellington it suffered a complete mobile meltdown during the recent All Blacks game for both Vodafone and Telecom with 2degrees being badly impacted. While thing have been badly affected in the past, the growing increase of data puts a lot more load on networks than voice traffic. In the TDMA days engineering was also a lot simpler - you either had a voice channel or you didn't and got a busy tone. Modern CDMA based air interfaces are very different.

MauriceWinn

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#898135 19-Sep-2013 02:24

WiFi offload however is a brain dead idea that has about as much hope of surviving as WAP did. Ultimately it'll die off because there is far more logic in deploying small scale cellsites.

It's a stupid concept that attempts to provide a seamless end user experience across two different PHY layers but can never do this because they have very little in common with very different RF characteristics and characteristics when under load.

Small and smaller cells was what I thought in the 1990s but the telecom providers kept prices high and did not fill in as needed. So we started Zenbu to compete with them, and RoamAD but that was designed as a metropolitan wide area network with costs too high to work.

Now, finally, Qualcomm [disclosure = I am a shareholder] is adopting a 1000x strategy for capacity and is aiming at hordes of little cells to increase capacity. The operators like Telecom, Vodafone and 2degrees will still have to want to do it and their strategy remains to charge as much as they can rather than as little as they can, so do not hold your breath. Wifi will be cheaper - if only because there is no 12% royalty as there is for W-CDMA/LTE devices, routers are cheap and spectrum is free, other than the new Globalstar wifi spectrum which Amazon and Ruckus have tested and for which Globalstar is seeking approval from the Federal Communications Commission in the USA.

There is much talk of femtocells using house-holder broadband backhaul but in practice, the telecom companies have charged too much to make such service really popular. But the pressure is on.

While the switch between wifi and 3G/4G networks is not seamless, it's not too bad.

Meanwhile, Qualcomm's Halo car recharge project continues, which will include wifi, Alljoyn [Qualcomm's peer to peer direct connection rather than through a network] and data management in general.   http://www.qualcommhalo.com/ Each car could be an internet connection with backhaul via O3B or Globalstar in the hinterlands or nearby fibre and a wifi hop in cities.

Maurice Winn

sbiddle

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#898145 19-Sep-2013 06:24

MauriceWinn:

While the switch between wifi and 3G/4G networks is not seamless, it's not too bad.

But it needs to be totally seamless and offer the exact same end user experience for WiFi offload to work. WiFi can't offer that.

MauriceWinn

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#898236 19-Sep-2013 08:56

Me: While the switch between wifi and 3G/4G networks is not seamless, it's not too bad.

SBiddle: But it needs to be totally seamless and offer the exact same end user experience for WiFi offload to work. WiFi can't offer that.

Me: It's definitely much nicer to have an invisible transition from one to the other as in soft handoff in 3G networks, but a good transition is good enough for most purposes. A friend moans to me that his cyberphone automatically connects to Zenbu wifi when he's at a cafe near a Zenbu site when he wants to use his Telecom 3G service. His phone does that because of his settings [he is totally non-Geek so that's a bit baffling for him and he thinks Zenbu is raiding his phone].

If he had a Zenbu account and had selected automatic connection, he'd be away cerfing fast and free [if provided by the Zenbu host] or at the standard roaming rate of 5c per MB in Oz, 10c in NZ. Then, when moving out of range of Zenbu, he'd switch back to Telecom's 3G. For the most part people are not traveling quickly between wireless links so don't need instantaneous connections to maintain phone conversations. Mostly people are stopped or walking while they cerf around Cyberspace or talk to somebody on Skype.

The point of off-loading to wifi is that people watching video or doing other high-data things do not need the soft handoff as do people talking. To enable the higher value voice calls, moving people to wifi helps keep things humming.

Maurice Winn

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