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Telematics – an intelligent future, like it or not
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Oct/Nov 2008
Wi-Fi, WiMAX and 4G: where next on the mobile front?
 Staying in touch while on the move is getting simpler and cheaper all the time, says Sharon Clancy, but will convergence or competition between technologies colour the future? Always-on Internet connectivity has dominated the consumer mobile world for several years now. Whether you're talking about mobile phones or wireless-enabled laptops and PDAs, people increasingly expect to be able to get online wherever they go. Now the business world seems to be heading the same way. The increase in public-access Wi-Fi coverage and the development of mobile broadband technologies seem set to propel businesses further in that direction, because they both simplify communications and make it cheaper to stay in touch with mobile workers. Whether in response to this demand or as the driver behind it, more devices are being sold with integrated Wi-Fi or 3G broadband radio capability included, and technologies are converging to simplify communications. 
Indeed, in the brave new world of joined-up computing, we may not be worrying much longer about choosing Wi-Fi or mobile broadband; we'll probably just be using whichever technology happens to be available in our current location. Seamless connectivity is hovering on the horizon, and some suppliers claim to offer it now. If you log on in a train or a coach, for example, your connection may be switched transparently between different carriers as you go, but if all works as planned you won't know anything about it. However, most of us are probably not quite at that stage yet, and to some extent you do still need to consider whether your mobile devices are compatible with the kind of connectivity that will be of most use to you. Which brings us neatly back to Wi-Fi. This technology now seems ubiquitous, and is familiar from the experience most of us have of home networks. So where are we at exactly with its progress in the business world, and where is it heading? And meanwhile, where exactly will WiMAX fit in? Hotspots hot up The excitement here is not so much about the Wi-Fi networks you set up yourself in your office or warehouse, but rather about the access that is more and more widely available – either free or for a modest payment – in the outside world. The latest report from Wi-Fi specialist iPass demonstrates that across the world, Wi-Fi access is becoming more and more mainstream. Once the preserve of global warriors with the IT backup to manage the tricky connection protocols, Wi-Fi really is now everywhere.  iPass says that in the past year business use of its Wi-Fi hotspots grew 46 per cent worldwide, with Europe now accounting for 47 per cent of the global figure. According the company's Mobile Broadband Index survey, London is still the world number one for mobile Wi-Fi usage, with over 31,000 user sessions, excluding airports and hotels, in the first half of 2008. Average session length was 57 minutes. London Heathrow airport is the third-busiest airport hotspot in the world, while Paddington is the UK's busiest Wi-Fi hotspot railway terminus. 'The results of the latest Mobile Broadband Index indicate that businesspeople worldwide continue to do more work away from the office,' says Joel Wachtler, vice-president of marketing and strategy at iPass. 'We see both Wi-Fi hotspots and 3G mobile broadband playing an important role in keeping the workforce productive, and iPass expects WiMAX and other 4G technologies to continue this trend towards a ubiquitously connected multi-technology world.' Airports are still on top with 40 per cent of overall sessions. Hotel sessions were much longer than the average, at 167 minutes per session, followed by around an hour for cafés, restaurants and other retail locations, and only 40 minutes for airports. The most dramatic growth, says iPass, came in hotspots located in public locations such as payphones, and in business parks and city centres. Wi-Fi use in public locations more than tripled and was marked by average session lengths of nearly three hours. Restaurants continue to increase in popularity too, and with use more than doubling they now account for 5 per cent of the worldwide usage. While cafés were still easily the largest retail category, their annual growth slowed to 18 per cent, perhaps signalling some saturation of this early segment for Wi-Fi hotspots. Open for business  BT's Openzone hotspot network is now five years old, and is made up of 3,000 BT-controlled access points. But not content with that total, BT has been adjusting its strategy to increase both the number of users and the number of access points. Already it has worked with 13 UK city authorities to provide the technology to create city-wide Wi-Fi networks. Now it is taking a more radical approach in an attempt to boost the number of access points to over 100,000. If that sounds like a magician's card trick, it's not. The secret weapon behind it is the large base of BT's existing fixed broadband customers. In return for sharing a small portion of the bandwidth used by their own fixed broadband connection, these customers, both business and domestic, are offered free access when they're out and about to BT's Openzone hotspots and the wireless cities. In effect, every participant becomes a kind of low-key Wi-Fi zone operator. BT makes this possible by opening up a separate, secure channel on your wireless broadband router. You shouldn't see any impact at all on your own connectivity; you just continue logging on safely as normal. BT has developed this capability following a link-up with the global FON Wi-Fi community, which started in Spain, and in which it is a partner. John Hurry, director of consumer Internet services at BT calls it 'the people's Wi-Fi network'. 'BT has been instrumental in creating Broadband Britain, and we have built on that by calling upon entire communities to come together to create a Wi-Fi network that covers the country, driven entirely by local broadband users. For £5 a month more than Total Broadband Option 3, customers get a free Internet-enabled smartphone that they can use at any FON site. Businesses get an inclusive number of minutes on Openzone, and for those on certain tariffs, mobile broadband connection is also free. Access Manager software automatically establishes the communication by the fastest, most reliable connection. To encourage adoption, BT has launched a new version of its BT Business Hub with the hotspot capability already enabled. Customers get the choice to opt out. Existing customers get a firmware upgrade. According to Chris Bruce, general manager of BT Openzone: 'Our customers have access to a quarter of the world's total hotspots to work, talk and play wherever they are, and our roaming usage figures demonstrate people are already taking advantage of this across the globe. For us, Wi-Fi roaming should be similar to the ATM system, where customers are able to use any cash machine regardless of their chosen bank.' BT has halved its Wi-Fi access rates and launched a simpler price structure with four tariffs, ranging from £5 for 500 minutes' access to £28 a month inclusive of 500 minutes' UK roaming and 500 minutes' international roaming. Mobile broadband Mobile 3G broadband is suddenly everywhere, and sits at the top of the Santa wish-list for technophiles across the land. This is the other popular way to log on in the field. If you have a smartphone, it probably gives you this connectivity straight out of the box. If you want the same thing with a laptop, the networks will offer you a 3G USB 'dongle' to get you online. In future, laptops could come with the relevant connectivity already built in, just as they now come with Wi-Fi connectivity; the only problem is the cost. According to the GSM Association, embedded HSPA modules currently cost around $70, which is a substantial premium to add to the ever-falling cost of a laptop. But it reckons the price could drop by half over the next 18 months. Indeed, the GSMA has recently put its muscle behind a campaign to promote what it calls Mobile Broadband, possibly in a bid to fend off competition from ubiquitous Wi-Fi, and increasingly also WiMAX (see panel). Whether this approach suits you probably depends on your usage patterns. You may be able to choose between a monthly fee for time-based access or megabytes of data, or a pay-as-you-go scheme. Some networks are offering free notebooks in return for a minimum monthly charge and length of contract. One feature you might not expect to get with 'dongle-style' mobile broadband is connection sharing. Historically, every device needed its own connection, with associated costs: potentially expensive, if several mobile workers from the same team are logging on in the same vicinity. However, the notion of mobile hotspots (mini-wireless networks based round a mobile phone or an HSPA dongle) is now becoming a reality. Collaboration The relative cheapness of Wi-Fi services has created opportunities for new suppliers to emerge, and for collaboration between suppliers to provide seamless mobile communications. For example, free-hotspot.com, which claims to be the world's largest free Wi-Fi Internet service provider, with 3,5000 hotspots in 18 European countries, has teamed up with DeFi Mobile, which provides a global IP platform for mobile applications and services. DeFi customers will now have access to free-hotspot.com's hotspots, allowing free VoiP calls over the network. All users have to do to gain access to free-hotspot.com's free wireless Internet service is to agree to watch an introductory sponsor advertisement. Freedom4 has just launched Mobile Broadband 1000, a service that combines 3G and Wi-Fi software to provide users with a flexible wireless service via a plug-in dongle. It includes a Wi-Fi hotspot locator and a text service to find the wireless access point nearest to your current position. Working in conjunction with partners Spectrum Interactive and Briteyellow, the company can now offer access to more than 4,000 hotspots in the UK and 50,000 globally. Richard Cunliffe, chief operating officer at Freedom4 Wi-Fi, says the key factor at the moment is fast download speeds. 'Our research has shown that our new combined package can provide speeds significantly faster than other mobile broadband products in the marketplace.' BOX: WiMAX – What it is, and where it fits in With all the attention lavished on Wi-Fi networks in recent years, it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking of WiMAX as a future technology, in the way that 4G is sometimes represented as a future technology for GSM cellular networks. You've probably seen WiMAX mentioned in the press (we often report on it in m.logistics), yet it always seems to be hovering somewhere out of reach. WiMAX, however, is based on a well-proven technology: microwaves. Stuart Little, chief technology office for Harris Stratex, a Californian microwave wireless transmission specialist, offers a down-to-earth analysis. 'Microwaves have been around since the 1950s,' he points out, 'and are an excellent method of transferring large amounts of data from point to multi-point over long distances.' Microwave-based communications systems can cover many miles, and can use licensed or unlicensed radio spectrum, although commercial networks are based on licensed spectrums in order to deliver quality of service. Claims that WiMAX can deliver 70 megabits/sec data are true, though not over the maximum distance between stations of around 50km. The reality is that is the bit error rate increases with distance, so speed has to drop accordingly. Line of sight is also essential for fast data transfers. Nevertheless, the range is very much longer than is offered by Wi-Fi, which is a shorter-range system, typically measured in metres. Also Wi-Fi uses unlicensed radio spectrum. The idea fondly cherished by WiMAX supporters is that eventually mobile users will be able to log on to a network like a Wi-Fi hotspot, but one which covers a whole city (or more). We're not there yet, but viable working WiMAX networks are already in use in various parts of the world, and there have been trials in the UK. Intel has upped the ante in recent years revealing that WiMAX connectivity is likely to be built into laptop computer chipsets in the near future. WiMAX versus 4G WiMAX is often considered to be the future of wireless communications. It may well turn out cheaper to build a WiMAX network than any other kind, especially where no there is no existing infrastructure. 'WiMAX is already in use now to provide extra capacity on the cellular networks for backhaul data traffic,' says Stuart Little. 'Even though they are planning to migrate to 4G eventually, many of the existing mobile operators will have WiMAX deployments to supplement their declining revenues with mobile broadband services and complete with fixed broadband suppliers.' Until the 4G network can be built (see jargonbuster panel), network operators are looking at WiMAX and 3.5G technologies such as HSDPA to cope with the extra data traffic generated by devices such as mobile Internet-enabled smartphones and Web-based services such as music and games downloading. ABI Research principal analyst Philip Solis says the network operators are looking both at LTE 4G and WiMAX to create global networks. 'Vodafone has a foot in both camps. They will use LTE in industrialised regions, and WiMAX in developing nations.' Some time in 2009, combined chips that support both WiMAX and LTE should start appearing, says Solis, with USB modems, laptops, netbooks and mobile Internet devices likely to be the first products to include the dual-mode chips. 'Device makers won't want separate chips for each protocol.' JARGONBUSTER WiMAX The initials stand for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access. It is a standards-based technology that allows the delivery of 'last mile' wireless broadband access at speeds up to 70Mb/sec. In effect, WiMAX is a broadband alternative to cable, DSL and HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) – the latter being what you get with smartphones or 'dongles'. WiMAX is the standard for IEEE 802.16 wireless networks, as Wi-Fi is the standard for IEEE 802.11 Wireless LAN networks. The current WiMAX version is 802.16-2004, as amended by 802.16e-2005. As defined above, WiMAX is basically a technology for fixed wireless broadband, but there is a further variant that defines its use in mobile applications. This is 802.16e-2005 (sometimes called Mobile WiMAX), which adds support for mobility with 'soft' and 'hard' handover between base stations. WiMAX can operate anywhere below 66 GHz. There are licensed global spectrums – 2.3 GHz, 2.5 GHz and 3.5 GHz – authorised by the WiMAX Forum, the standards body, but the frequencies also have to be made available by individual countries. LTE Long Term Evolution, also known as 4G. This is seen as the next generation of mobile phone technology, following on (unsurprisingly) from 3G. It's a broadband all-IP network with voice services too. LTE is 'long-term' because, unlike the upgrade from 2.5G to 3G, it uses new communications protocols and technology. That means rebuilding all the network base stations, requiring considerable investment by the network operators.
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