John,
I think this will happen faster than you predict. With the Lucent
light radio being software defined the technology already exists to do this.
Carrier engineering departments are just a bit slow to change. Carriers have
to look at the Pico cell design to increase capacity by more frequency reuse
in smaller footprints. Their challenge right know as you suggest if the
fiber to the pole infrastructure to serve these Pico cells. To a certain
extent they can do this now with the cable companies. These Bellaire radios
have docsis modems built right in and they are working on power over coax to
run the node radios. It's not a big stretch to change out the Wi-Fi radio
with an LTE Pico radio at all. You are spot on with your understanding of
how things will evolve. Technically it's a no brainer. The interesting part
will be the business models, partnerships and/or roaming type agreements.
Thank You,
Brian Webster
www.wirelessmapping.com
www.Broadband-Mapping.com
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On
Behalf Of John Scrivner
Sent: Thursday, January 26, 2012 11:22 PM
To: WISPA General List
Subject: [WISPA] Future of Wifi Offloading WAS: Ericsson is buying BelAir,
betting on Wi-Fi
Here are my predictions based partly upon the acquisitions we have seen of
Atheros by Qualcomm and now this latest play into Wifi by otherwise
generally licensed zealots of the mobile world:
The large mobile carrier equipment companies will supply Wifi solutions to
the national players who will then build Wifi micro-cell infrastructure out
using this commodity priced platform. Then these same equipment makers will
develop a "New and Improved" line of pico-base LTE boxes at a better margin
than the Wifi-only APs but much less than their LTE macro-base equivalents.
Cellcos, cablecos, etc.
will then replace their Wifi-only micro-cell APs with dual mode Wifi and LTE
pico-bases to enable the benefits of Wifi and cellular both while removing
the disadvantages from either platform for their needs.
I believe that this move will enable the melding of fixed and mobile
wireless broadband enabling WISPs to finally get into this dual game.
Those best positioned to take advantage of this will be fiber to the home
operators who are also WISPs who will then build out "Fiber to the Access
Point" and deliver the "Last 1000 feet" wirelessly to their customers. With
an infrastructure model like this ISPs can deliver the capacity needed for
customers to supply voice, video and data while eliminating one of the
terribly expensive parts of the FTTH platform invoking the drops to the
homes.
I predict we'll see all this come to pass by 2017-18. We'll see how clear my
crystal ball is in a few years. I hope you guys will remember this then and
be sure to pull it up and make fun of me for being so
far off....or not! :-)
John Scrivner
On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 11:00 AM, Jack Unger <[email protected]> wrote:
> In a sure sign that the cellular industry is getting serious about
> Wi-Fi, telecom networking giant Ericsson is buying BelAir Networks,
> adding its high-performance outdoor hotspot technology to its
> portfolio, sources told GigaOM. The deal could signal a big shift in
> the mindset of the big wireless vendors, which have always favored
> their own specialized and expensive cellular technologies to meet
> growing mobile data demand rather than more generic but much cheaper Wi-Fi
tech...
>
> <http://gigaom.com/broadband/ericsson-pursuing-wi-fi-with-belair-netwo
> rks-buy/>
>
> --
> Jack Unger - President, Ask-Wi.Com, Inc.
> Author (2003) - "Deploying License-Free Wireless Wide-Area Networks"
> Serving the WISP Community since 1993
> www.ask-wi.com 818-227-4220 [email protected]
>
>
>
>
>
>
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