Mobile Operators Expand Hotzones
Mobile operators are adding WiFi hot-spot locations to their networks. The hot-spots are designed to offload network traffic from the company’s 3G network and boost performance for customers. WiFi hot-spots are being lit up on a daily basis and mobile operators are giving their customers access to them. This is prompted by the proliferation of smart phones, ipads and other wireless devices.
The idea of a hotzone makes perfect sense for a firm that’s getting criticism for being unable to meet the data needs of subscribers in some cities and neighborhoods. Wi-Fi cells can be quite small, and have much higher capacity than cell channels, while being enormously cheaper to run, partly because there’s no opportunity cost related to expensive cellular spectrum licenses.
These hot-zones differ from municipal Wi-Fi efforts started in 2005 and mostly abandoned by 2007. Municipal networks were typically designed to require private investment by firms to provide indoor and outdoor network coverage to ninety to ninety five percent of a city.
Hot-zones will cover outdoor areas of high traffic, and work only for customers. There’s no specific municipal benefit involved, and mobile operators will control their deployments entirely.
It’s a smart move. Operators could likely spend less a tenth as much in high-traffic areas to add Wi-Fi as to beef up cellular. And there’s only so much spectrum available, meaning that in many areas there may be no real way to enhance the 3G data side.
This is Wi-Fi as a 3G network heat sink.
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