Archive for the ‘Network’ Category
Monday, June 20th, 2011
Karen Ambrose Hickey, Editor
Being a first time attendee at a WBA conference can be a fascinating experience, if you like to be among the best of the best carriers and network partners in the world.
The likes of BT, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Portugal Telecom, Vex in Brazil, China Mobile, Cisco and even Google are here at the 19th WBA Roundtable & Ecosystem Conference . WBA, the Worldwide Broadband Alliance, is quickly becoming a strong alliance among carriers, network services providers and device partners who have a common goal: to deliver a cellular-like, secure Wi-Fi roaming experience. As one presenter said, the Wi-Fi experience needs to be just like a smartphone – just turn on the phone and get connected; it just works!
The morning began with Introductions and the opening address by Chris Bruce, Chair of the WBA and CEO of BT Openzone. Chris spoke about the insatiable appetite for mobile data and the cost and revenue challenge this is presenting for Carriers creating the opportunity to deliver Wi-Fi as part of the carrier solution. “On the pause” has become “always on”. The result is that Wi-Fi has become a strategic asset and with that, it is forcing network operators to address the user experience as user interfaces drive adoption of Wi-Fi usage.
Next, the VP/GM of Cisco’s Wireless Networking Business Unit, Ray Smets, gave a “reality adjustment” talk on Roaming 2.0 – The Undiscovered Country (Star Trek anyone?). His statistics for the future of mobile data traffic were quite staggering. By 2015 mobile data traffic will reach 75 “extabytes” (one quintillion), yes, extabytes. That is equivalent to 19 Billion DVDs, 536 quadrillion SMS text messages and is 75 time more traffic than ALL the traffic in 2000!
By 2015, two thirds of mobile traffic will be video (yeah Netflix and Hulu!) and will more than double every year between 2010 and 2015. And this stat is certainly one that resonates with those who read our latest Mobile Workforce Report: by 2015, tablets will generate data traffic equal to the total data traffic in 2010! And lastly, that by 2015 7.2 billion devices will exist; a mobile connected device for every member of the population.
As some of us were still working out the word “extabytes”, we heard from a Principal Analyst at Informa who continued that smartphones are set to be the primary device to connect to hotspots. Therefore, network operators of all types will need to provide Wi-Fi to users as public hotpsots mushroom from about 1.4 million in 2011 to 2.4 million by the end of 2012. He continued his talk expressing the importance of “smart Wi-Fi”; carrier-grade technology used to deliver a carrier-grade user experience i.e. a quality experience.
His analysis shows that users will prefer to connect to hotspots provided by trusted providers and that users will continue to show a willingness to pay for Wi-Fi *if* it matches their expectations in terms of availability, performance, usability and security. His prediction is that Wi-Fi is becoming another access network, in other words, a delivery platform for all operator services.
The rest of the sessions included Portugal Telecom talking specifically about their goal to make Wi-Fi easy, reliable, secure and portable. He was followed by Marjorie Leonidas, head of Wholesale and Roaming for BT Wi-Fi who spoke about the value of different business models for different types of traffic as well as the importance of the standards that WBA is delivering to help global network operators with integration such as 802.1x which supports the secure and seamless authentication of Wi-Fi.
The best and last presentation, not through any bias of course, was that of Dr Angelo Mavridis from Deutsche Telekom and our own Marcio Avillez, VP of Network Offerings, who presented the strategy and new offering from Deutsche Telekom based on Open Mobile, DTs’ WiFi Mobilize.
A great start to WBA’s 19th Roundtable Conference and an alliance of which we are proud to be an active member.
Making Wi-Fi a strategic asset – WBA Roundtable >>
Monday, June 13th, 2011
Karen Ambrose Hickey, Editor
4G offers faster wireless data transmission speeds, more coverage and support for a new generation of mobile applications and services. As 2011 progressed, we saw a move to LTE, and some HSPA+.
http://bcove.me/njvb8bgd
You can catch our recorded webcast, The Future of 4G and its Impact on Enterprise IT, about how 4G technology affects your mobile workers and, ultimately, the enterprise. The webcast covers the various 4G technologies, the opportunities for Service Providers, growth in coverage, dealing with fragmented user experiences (particularly when traveling and roaming), and how to plan with the incomplete coverage and more.
In additions, we have a new white paper, titled LTE – the Other 4G. Moving past WiMAX, this paper examines LTE and HSPA+ technologies and the implications on enterprises making mobile broadband decisions in the near term.
One of the advantages of LTE is the simplification (and cost savings) on the architecture. Until carriers can deploy LTE to available radio spectrum, they may be forced to still offer HSPA+. However, HD voice quality is on it’s way, which should help speed the turnover of 2G and 3G networks to release available spectrum. Smartphones and data usage have already driven an almost insatiable need for bandwidth. There’s bound to be more services in the future to continue to fuel this growth.
LTE, the Other 4G – webcast and whitepaper >>
Tuesday, May 17th, 2011
Karen Ambrose Hickey, Editor
Today we announced a partnership with Gowex, provider of “Wi-Fi Cities” in cities throughout Spain.
Rather than looking for a specific retail location for a Wi-Fi hotspot, Gowex has integrated into “city life.” Public Wi-Fi for our iPass customers can be accessed from newsstands, companies, universities and even the transportation system. As they say, it’s any time or place, “always on” and total freedom of movement.
So while you move about the cities of Spain, here are some sights to see, with Wi-Fi all around in the city:
Madrid
Royal Palace: largest royal palace in Western Europe.
Puerta del Sol: Madrid’s most famous and most central square (Puerta del Sol Wi-Fi)
Puerta de Alcalá. A Madrid icon, this old city gate was originally built in 1599, and changed in 1769
Bilbao:
Museo Guggenheim: modern architecture from Frank Gehry, with titanium tiles and flying fins
Santiago Cathedral: The church is the city’s oldest building and dates from the end of the 14th century.
Casco Viejo: was the walled part of the town until the end of the 19th century.
Seville:
Alcázar of Seville: a royal palace, originally a Moorish fort.
Torre del Oro: was built by the Almohad dynasty as watchtower and defensive barrier on the river.
Happy connecting!
Mas Wi-Fi in Spain – que facil! >>
Thursday, May 12th, 2011
Brian Metzger, Sr. Marketing Mgr, Carrier Services
On April 26th, iPass announced that our global Wi-Fi footprint exceeded 500,000 venues. An important point about this number is that it is all ‘commercial-grade’ access. What does that mean? Well, in simple terms, it means trust and quality – that there is a respectable level of credibility, uptime and performance associated with the access point. Commercial-grade doesn’t mean ‘expensive’. In fact, over 21,000 of our commercial-grade access points are FREE!
Why such a big focus on commercial-grade? Well, in an effort to preserve data roaming spend, would you want to inadvertently connect your enterprise and employees to ‘Jackals’ hotspot? Or, what about a hotspot belonging to an obscure ‘numbered company’? Who owns these hotspots anyway? Are they involved in a credit card theft ring? Identify theft? Are they criminals or can they be trusted? How would you know? Hence the importance of the iPass commercial-grade footprint, provisioned by trusted network suppliers.
There are other nascent hotspot aggregators that offer a larger number of access points by allowing individuals and home users to ‘opt’ their Wi-Fi access point into the network for a benefit – whether for money or otherwise. And the reason you want to offer up all the data on your laptop, smart phone and tablet to these home-gamers is…? Yeah, I couldn’t think of one either.
At iPass, we believe the future of Wi-Fi network provisioning and ownership lies with carriers and mobile network operators as Wi-Fi becomes an increasingly important aspect of our mobile data fabric. It’s no longer the fringe network; Wi-Fi is now an essential and integrated component of 3/4G mobility and data roaming.
That’s why iPass will continue to work with carriers and mobile operators, adopting their trusted networks and leave the home-gamer hotspot aggregation business to other players who are still wallowing in the fringe, and not doing business on the trusted network.
Why commercial-grade Wi-Fi matters >>
Tuesday, May 10th, 2011
Karen Ambrose Hickey, Editor
The cellular bandwidth crunch may indeed be one of the top concerns that keep carrier CEOs up at night. With mobile data traffic growing exponentially* and forecasted to reach 6.3EB** by 2015, carriers are faced with a real prospect of mobile data delivery costs outweighing revenues as early as in 2012.
Recently, AT&T CEO Ralph de la Vega told CNN that one of the big reasons for its purchase of T-Mobile “was the need for additional spectrum” and that, without T-Mobile, ATT would run into big challenges in the short term, especially in major cities.
So considering this dire bandwidth crunch problem, I ask why not use Wi-Fi to offload traffic from congested 3G/4G networks? Wi-Fi seems to be the “elephant in the room” that until recently many of the carriers failed to notice. Back in 2002 soon after I started working at Cisco on wireless mobility solutions, the key focus was on “mission critical” applications for verticals such as public safety, transportation, and “enterprise grade” applications such as on-campus roaming and guest access.
A couple of years later, some of the more visionary projects at Cisco were targeting to “blanket” major cities with Wi-Fi for mass market uses, but the applications and the commercial models were not mature enough at the time to trigger mass deployments. This was back in the day when BlackBerry and Palm Treo were the only game in town and before the era of YouTube and Netflix.
Back to the future, today with Wi-Fi being used by over 700 million people, with over 750,000 publically accessible hotspots around the world, and with mobile video traffic projected to exceed 25% of the total internet traffic by the end of 2011, Wi-Fi is without doubt becoming both ubiquitous and ripe for mass deployment.
With these compelling numbers in mind, the question is how come that until recently carriers failed to realize the opportunity of using Wi-Fi to offload data from their congested cellular networks? I personally believe that the reason, at least in part, has to do with the difficulty to predict a few years back the positive feedback loop which created the exponential growth in mobile data traffic that we witness today. The positive feedback loop started with video over the internet emerging as the “killer app” and was compounded by increases in 3G/4G data throughput and smartphone performance. This in turn enhanced the mobile video user experience, which increased the demand for mobile video and other bandwidth intensive applications even further, and so forth…
There is no doubt though that now the carriers do recognize both the bandwidth crunch related challenges and the Wi-Fi potential to help address these challenges, at least in the near term. This is why I’m so excited that yesterday the International Carrier Sales & Solutions (ICSS), the international wholesale arm of Deutsche Telekom Group within the IBU, and iPass Inc. announced their partnership to create WiFi Mobilize, a new network services exchange which will offer both data offload and international roaming solutions.
WiFi Mobilize solutions are crafted to address the bandwidth crunch as well as bill shock and inconsistent access, usually associated with international roaming. WiFi Mobilize offers its Wi-Fi exchange services to carriers worldwide who can now quickly realize their data offload and international roaming plans by becoming WiFi Mobilize members. As part of this membership, carriers will be granted access to:
- Open Mobile Platform used to provide authentication, settlement, reporting and other capabilities to enhance the end users’ experience and deliver value added services on top of their own WiFi and cellular transport infrastructure.
- Open Mobile Client used to provide a consistent user experience and enforce network access policies across devices and networks.
- International roaming service leveraging the growing iPass Mobile Network with more than 500,000 commercial-grade WiFi hotspots.
For more details please refer to yesterday’s announcement and the blog by Evan Kaplan, CEO of iPass, yesterday called: With a little help – Cheap and Cheerful Wi-Fi wins the day.
* 92% CAGR between 2010 and 2015: based on Cisco VNI Mobile 2011 report
** Based on Cisco VNI mobile 2011 report; 1 EB = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 B = 1018 bytes = 1 billion gigabytes = 1 million terabytes
The Elephant in the Room >>
