Wi-Fi – “the toy that grew up”

Reprinted from the Wireless Broadband Association: Industry News Roundup

Wi-Fi – “the toy that grew up”

Historically, Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) looked at Wi-Fi as a toy, a low-end technology that was great to off-load data from networks. Now Wi-Fi is having a strategic impact on MNOs across the globe. Now the question is LTE or Wi-Fi: remind me which one’s for off-load?

Yet, as with many technical innovations, the low-end always wins. Wi-Fi is a classic example of this theory. Through a combination of Moore’s Law, economies of scale, R&D investments and free market dynamics Wi-Fi is king of the hill. In most developed countries people and things can access a Wi-Fi network in 80% of locations. Companies, such as Devicescape, have created virtual networks based on “ambient’ Wi-Fi networks. Hotspots are so ubiquitous that Opensignal launched an application to find the best one out of the many available.

Wi-Fi and Hotspots are becoming strategic to all carriers (fixed and mobile) as they have realized the importance of keeping traffic on their network for quality of experience and billing purposes. The market for carrier Wi-Fi gear continues to grow as carriers look to exploit these opportunities.

Today, high- speed access to the Internet is as fundamental as indoor plumbing. People expect it and city and national governments view it as mandatory for many economic development and quality of life issues. With the ubiquity of Wi-Fi enabled devices and the simplicity of Wi-Fi deployments it is no surprise that Wi-Fi is a leading candidate to achieve this. Even in remote,rural and under-developed regions, Wi-Fi leads the ways.

Even with fierce competition from ZigBee and other alternatives Wi-Fi is also a leading network technology for applications using IoT technologies. Wearables are no exception. LG smart watches use Wi-Fi and researchers are looking to Wi-Fi for an entire body network. We could all become Wi-Fi access points.

Yet success breeds challenges. Wi-Fi uses attractive unlicensed frequency bands and the licensed crowd wants in as the LTE community is looking to use the same 5 Ghz frequency band. Trying to head off a battle royale, the U.S. FCC has already entered the fray.

Wi-Fi, the toy that grew up, continues its momentum to solve real problems for consumers, businesses, service providers and governments. It was often said never to bet against Ethernet, I’d like to add never bet against Wi-Fi.

Greg Whelan, ACG Research

To discuss this and other strategic technology issues impacting the global service provider market please contact me

Cloud (Network) PVR Discussion

After a delay due to legal review, which was settled favorably to the SPs’ network, DVR/PVRs (N-PVR) are being deployed in earnest by all SPs. N-PVRs are becoming mainstream: In addition to improving the consumers’ experiences they also offer numerous business values to the SP. N-PVRs are also a great step toward virtualization and the move to everything on demand. Simply put, an N-PVR is a DVR that resides in the cloud. When a viewer stores a program, instead of it being stored on a hard disk drive located inside the set-top box, the program (or metadata) is stored on a server or CDN cache located in the service provider’s network.

N-PVRs benefit both the service provider and the consumer. Service providers benefit substantially on both CAPEX and OPEX. Service providers have a love-hate relationship with the set-top box. They love them because they provide a managed service enablement platform in each home, yet they hate them because they account for about 50% of total CAPEX. Interesting to note is providers argue they are part of the network when it is convenient and argue that they are CPE when it is not. The latter is because of regulator ambiguity of TITLE VI in the U.S.

By eliminating the hard drive from every set-top the cost of the box is reduced, directly impacting CAPEX. Hard drives, being mechanical devices, will fail. The elimination of the drive thus increases the reliability of the box and reduces angry customer support calls and truck rolls. This directly impacts OPEX. Without a hard drive the set-top box will consume less energy, supporting the SPs’ goal of meeting the voluntary energy reduction agreement the industry and the U.S. Department of Energy (Note, not the FCC) signed in early 2014.

N-PVRs store consumer “save” programming in the cloud. This simplifies whole home DVR and video everywhere service offerings. With N-PVR all consumer playback originates in the network and not the primary set-top box. Although newer homes have coax cable widely installed throughout the home the bulk of homes do not. All in-home technology deployments are challenging to the SP because of the high variability in both the housing stock and in consumer sophistication. With the N-PVR all video streams are delivered from the network as “just another” channel.

N-PVRs benefit the move to TV everywhere or TV to all devices. In the home consumers watch TV programming on all of their devices. Because Wi-Fi is the common fabric connecting every device, N-PVR based video programming can be sent via the broadband connection and over the Wi-Fi network to all devices. Thus, consumers can view stored programming on all their devices, and the SP does not have to contend with home networking issues.

The N-PVR takes this concept out of the home as well. Consumers can view stored program from anywhere on any device with a broadband connect. This also applies to the delivery of programming on smart phones via 4G/LTE connections. In each of these cases, the stored SP programming is treated as over-the-top (OTT) and facing the same challenges pure OTT suppliers face such as quality of service and data usages. Equally, they can benefit from the innovation in the OTT marketplace.

This everywhere DVR experience also presents a new revenue opportunity to the SP. Targeted advertising and local ad insertion take on new meaning. For example, if a Boston-based consumer is watching a stored program from San Francisco, why show the ad Boston-based car dealership? Similarly, with smart phone location-based services being widely deployed, the SP can insert a targeted ad based on the user’s real-time location.

As illustrated, N-PVRs not only offer consumers a better video experience, they offer the SP real business value: reduction of both CAPEX and OPEX and creation of new revenue generating opportunities. Properly deployed, the N-PVR infrastructure will create the foundation for everything on demand and the move to virtual set-top boxes. Given these factors, SPs should deploy N-PVRs aggressively with the caveat that they must take a long-term strategic approach of viewing N-PVRs as the first application of the platform and not the only application. 

To discuss this please contact me at gwhelan@acgresearch.net