Are massive, aggregated Wi-Fi networks the way of the future? This week’s news items includes iPass & Devicescape teaming up to produce a network of 50 million hotspots. We hoping to get iPass CEO Gary Griffiths join us on the show some time over the next couple of weeks to explain what iPass is going to use that big Wi-Fi network for.
On this week’s show Vivek Ganti of Cablelabs talks about big future improvements to Wi-Fi quality & mobility with FILS (Fast Initial Link Setup) or 802.11ai. Today, it can take up to 5 or 10 seconds to connect a device to a Wi-Fi acces point, but in the future FILS will potentially reduce the link setup time of a Wi-Fi session to 100 milliseconds. The technology may even allow Wi-Fi to achieve a form of mobility, says Vivek Ganti. He says that FILS is likely mostly a carrier Wi-Fi feature and will require software (but not hardware) changes on devices and infrastructure. Look for networks & devices supporting FILS some time mid next year, he says.
Mobile Expert’s analyst Joe Madden says that ‘the carrier Wi-Fi market is upside dow’: While carriers spend some 900 million dollars on Wi-Fi infrastructure, the revenue on Wi-Fi is only about 270 million dollars. He also says that he doesn’t believe that carriers (MSOs) are using Wi-Fi for retention but rather because they are preparing a venture into mass market wireless services. Je Madden’s new report on carrier Wi-Fi – which we will be discussing on the show – can be found here: http://www.mobile-