WBA Annual Industry Report 2017/18Maravedis-Rethink makes no warranties express or implied as to the...

WBA Annual Industry Report 2017/18

Source: Wireless Broadband Alliance Author(s): Caroline Gabriel and Adlane Fellah, Maravedis-Rethink Issue date: 13 December 2017Version: 1.0

Report title: WBA Industry Report 2017 Issue Date: 13 December 2017 Version: 1.0

Wireless Broadband Alliance Confidential & Proprietary.

Copyright © 2017 Wireless Broadband Alliance

ABOUT THE WIRELESS BROADBAND ALLIANCE

Founded in 2003, the mission of the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) is to resolve business issues and enable collaborative opportunities for service providers, enterprises and cities, enabling them to enhance the customer experience on Wi-Fi and significant adjacent technologies. Building on our heritage of NGH and carrier Wi-Fi, WBA will continue to drive and support the adoption of Next Generation Wi-Fi services across the entire public Wi-Fi ecosystem, including IoT, Big Data, Converged Services, Smart Cities, 5G, etc. Today, membership includes major fixed operators such as BT, Comcast and Charter; seven of the top 10 mobile operator groups (by revenue) and leading technology companies such as Cisco, Microsoft, Huawei Technologies, Google and Intel. WBA member operators collectively serve more than 2 billion subscribers and operate more than 30 million hotspots globally.

The WBA Board includes AT&T, Boingo Wireless, BT, Cisco Systems, Comcast, Intel, KT Corporation, Liberty Global, NTT DOCOMO, Orange and Ruckus Wireless. For a complete list of current WBA members, please click here.

Wi-Fi is well placed to take an important role in 5G development, and on-going convergence developments between licensed and unlicensed wireless will have a significant impact on the future of wireless communications.

Follow Wireless Broadband Alliance at: http://www.twitter.com/wballiance

http://www.facebook.com/WirelessBroadbandAlliance

http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=50482

https://plus.google.com/106744820987466669966/posts

ABOUT MARAVEDIS-RETHINK

Maravedis-Rethink is a premier wireless infrastructure analyst firm. We focus on broadband wireless technologies (including LTE, WiMAX, small cells, core and backhaul) as well as industry spectrum regulations and operator trends.

Since 2002, Maravedis and Rethink Research have provided clients worldwide with strategic insight to help them achieve key business objectives. Clients can access Maravedis-Rethink’ technology, spectrum and market intelligence through subscription-based research services which include disruptive reports, webinars and online databases, analyst support and briefings as well as custom consulting engagements. Maravedis-Rethink has offices in 7 countries across 4 continents. Follow Maravedis-Rethink at: http://www.twitter.com/maravedis http://www.maravedis-bwa.com/en/about/about-maravedis

http://www.wballiance.com/join-us/current-members/

http://www.twitter.com/wballiance

http://www.facebook.com/WirelessBroadbandAlliance

http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=50482

https://plus.google.com/106744820987466669966/posts

http://www.twitter.com/maravedis

http://www.maravedis-bwa.com/en/about/about-maravedis


Wireless Broadband Alliance Confidential & Proprietary. Copyright © 2017 Wireless Broadband Alliance

DISCLAIMER

Maravedis-Rethink makes no warranties express or implied as to the results to be obtained from use of this research material and makes no warranties expressed or implied of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Maravedis-Rethink shall have no liability to the recipient of this research material or to any third party for any indirect, incidental, special or consequential damages arising out of use of this research material.

This Document and all the information contained in this Document is provided on an ‘as is’ basis without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for particular purpose, or non-infringement. In addition, the WBA (and all other organisations who may have contributed to this document) makes no representations or warranties about the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the information. The information may contain technical inaccuracies or typographical errors. All liabilities of the WBA (and all other organisations who may have contributed to this document) howsoever arising for any such inaccuracies, errors, incompleteness, suitability, merchantability, fitness and non-infringement are expressly excluded to the fullest extent permitted by law. None of the contributors make any representation or offer to license any of their intellectual property rights to the other, or to any third party. Nothing in this information or communication shall be relied on by any recipient.

The WBA also disclaims any responsibility for identifying the existence of or for evaluating the applicability of any claimed copyrights, patents, patent applications, or other intellectual property rights, and will take no position on the validity or scope of any such rights. The WBA takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any intellectual property or other rights that might be claimed to pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in this document or the extent to which any license under such rights might or might not be available; nor does it represent that it has made any effort to identify any such rights.

Neither the WBA nor any of the other organisations who may have contributed to this document will be liable for loss or damage arising out of or in connection with the use of this information. This is a comprehensive limitation of liability that applies to all damages of any kind, including (without limitation) compensatory, direct, indirect or consequential damages, loss of data, income or profit, loss of or damage to property and claims of third-parties.



CONTENTS

Executive Summary ................................................................................................................................................................ 1

1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................................ 4

1.1 Carriers & Service Providers ....................................................................................................................... 4 1.2 Hospitality, Retail & Enterprise ................................................................................................................ 5 1.3 Connected Cities .............................................................................................................................................. 5

2 Wi-Fi Evolution & Monetization ............................................................................................................ 12

2.1 Monetizing Wi-Fi Services ........................................................................................................................ 12 2.2 High Density Deployments ...................................................................................................................... 13 2.3 In-Home Wi-Fi Experience and Smart Home Opportunities ................................................. 14 2.4 Device Usability and Experience ......................................................................................................... 15 2.5 Enterprise Cloud-Managed Wi-Fi ......................................................................................................... 16 2.6 Wi-Fi Roaming ................................................................................................................................................ 17 2.7 Wi-Fi Roaming Case Study: AT&T ......................................................................................................... 20 2.8 Case Study: Boingo’s Convergence Strategy .................................................................................. 22

3 The Evolution of Connected Cities ...................................................................................................... 25

3.1 Vertical Smart City Applications .......................................................................................................... 25 3.2 Citizens’ Engagement ................................................................................................................................. 26 3.3 Interoperability: “Breaking” the silos ................................................................................................. 27 3.4 Assessing the role of different technologies ................................................................................. 27 3.5 Smart City Applications ............................................................................................................................. 30 3.6 Connected Cities Deployment Status ................................................................................................ 31 3.7 The role of CCAB and the WBA ............................................................................................................. 32 3.8 Case Study: Google India .......................................................................................................................... 34

4 Network Evolution & 5G ............................................................................................................................ 36

4.1 Context: .............................................................................................................................................................. 36 4.2 Standardization and the 5G roadmap ............................................................................................... 38

4.2.1 5G requirements............................................................................................................................................ 38

4.3 The role of Wi-Fi and unlicensed spectrum technologies in 5G ......................................... 40 4.3.1 Wi-Fi evolves 5G-type capabilities ...................................................................................................... 40

4.3.2 Lines blur between cellular and Wi-Fi .............................................................................................. 43

4.3.3 Other unlicensed spectrum technologies ....................................................................................... 44

4.4 5G use cases .................................................................................................................................................... 45 4.4.1 5G use case categories .............................................................................................................................. 46



4.4.2 Initial use cases – Mobile Broadband (MBB) and Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) ......... 49

4.4.3 Future use case priorities in 5G............................................................................................................. 49

4.5 SDN/ NFV, orchestration and service convergence ................................................................... 51 4.5.1 Key network architecture trends .......................................................................................................... 52

4.5.2 Cooperation between standards efforts: ......................................................................................... 55

4.6 Case study: Liberty Global ....................................................................................................................... 56 5 Spectrum and Regulatory Policies for Unlicensed Spectrum and for 5G ...................... 57

5.1 Introduction: .................................................................................................................................................... 57 5.2 Current spectrum and regulatory situation: .................................................................................. 58 5.3 Additional allocation of unlicensed and shared spectrum.................................................... 59

5.3.1 The 5 GHz band: ............................................................................................................................................ 61

5.3.2 Coexistence in the 5 GHz band ............................................................................................................. 62

5.4 Coordinated shared spectrum models ............................................................................................. 63 5.5 Regulatory and spectrum framework for 5G ................................................................................. 65

5.5.1 Millimeter wave bands .............................................................................................................................. 68

5.6 Security Privacy and Identity Policies ................................................................................................ 69 6 Opportunities towards 5G ........................................................................................................................ 70

6.1 How the ecosystem can benefit from the co-existence and convergence of Wi-Fi within 5G ........................................................................................................................................................... 70

6.2 What the WBA role is in enabling that convergence ................................................................ 71 7 Analysis of 2017 Industry Survey .......................................................................................................... 72

7.1 Next Generation Hotspot has crossed a chasm: .......................................................................... 72 7.2 Investment confidence is driven by convergence: ..................................................................... 73 7.3 Traffic patterns will change as services evolve: .......................................................................... 75 7.4 Services and monetization ...................................................................................................................... 76 7.5 Connected cities drive the future business case: ........................................................................ 77 7.6 Challenges still exist, for network deployment and services: .............................................. 78

8 Addendum ........................................................................................................................................................ 79



FIGURES Figure 2. Comparison between 5G and 802.11ax requirements indicating close alignment of roadmaps. ........................ 41 Figure 3. Enhanced 802.11 capabilities compared with those of IMT-2020 and IMT-Advanced. ....................................... 43 Figure 4. Wireless connectivity technologies targeting the Internet of Things............................................................................ 45 Figure 5. 5GPP use case categories ...................................................................................................................................................................... 47 Figure 6. Key use case priorities for 5G. Percentage of MNOs placing each use case in their top three for

commercial impact. ................................................................................................................................................................................. 50 Figure 7. A software-defined, virtualized network with multiple RATs. ........................................................................................... 53 Figure 8. MEC in a smart city environment with mixed access networks ........................................................................................ 55 Figure 9. Traditional regulatory situation with a clear divided between licensed and unlicensed................................. 58 Figure 10. Licensed, unlicensed and shared spectrum schemes will work together in future............................................. 59 Figure 11. Proportion of unlicensed spectrum, below and above 6 GHz. Source: Plum Consulting ............................... 60 Figure 12. Source: Oi Brazil ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 63 Figure 13. Current and future cellular spectrum bands to 2025. ......................................................................................................... 67 Figure 14. The US view of potential new spectrum sources for 5G .................................................................................................... 69

TABLES

Table 1 - Selection of use cases for next generation mobile networks............................................................................................ 48


1


Executive Summary

This year’s annual industry survey from the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) comes at a highly significant time for the wireless ecosystem. As user demands for fast, reliable, affordable wireless data continue to rise, service providers are also considering how to expand and transform their business models with new use cases. As Wi-Fi and other technologies evolve, there is the opportunity to connect a vast array of devices, vehicles, sensors and buildings, to support applications which have scarcely been possible before.

Many of these discussions about new connected services and business cases are taking place in the context of the next generation of wireless technologies, 5G. Like most stakeholders, the WBA believes that 5G will, unlike previous generations of standards, be more than a cellular radio definition. Instead, it will be a broad platform which integrates multiple radio access technologies (RATs) in unlicensed, shared and licensed spectrum. Current and future evolutions of Wi-Fi, and other unlicensed spectrum technologies such as low power wide area networks (LPWANs), will play a crucial role in extending high quality, high speed, low latency wireless connectivity to many new users and use cases, including the connection of huge numbers of machines and sensors.

This year’s report examines these business opportunities in detail, along with the technology and spectrum developments which will enable them. Its conclusions are informed by the results of the WBA’s annual survey, which identified the highest ever level of confidence in investing in Wi-Fi – over 80% of respondents feel as or more confident than they did a year ago. Looking at unlicensed spectrum more broadly, 47% feel more confident.

This points to the broadening ways to monetize public Wi-Fi as the platform evolves to be flexible in supporting a range of traffic and usage patterns. In this year’s WBA Industry Survey, the Internet of Things, streaming video and Wi-Fi Calling were identified as the top three drivers of additional traffic, but each of these uses the network in a different way. Delivering a network across multiple spectrum bands, with different levels of bandwidth, power and latency depending on the application, is the central aim of Wi-Fi evolution and of 5G in general.

In terms of monetization, the report identifies several important trends which are helping to enable these new business models. As well as traditional use cases such as consumer data access and Wi-Fi offload – which are still central to many providers – these areas were highlighted as one which would drive near term revenue potential:

• Improving the in-home experience and extending it from internet access and media, to a full smart home

• Enterprise services, which are becoming richer and more efficient via options such as cloud-managed networks and security


2


• Expansion of the Wi-Fi roaming model, which is a key achievement of WBA programs going right back to its foundation

In all cases, an enhanced user experience is vital to progress, and this is being delivered by developments such as rising adoption of the WBA’s Next Generation Hotspot (NGH) in tandem with the Wi-Fi Alliance’s Passpoint program, which together support seamless authentication and seamless multi-RAT access. The industry survey found that NGH had really crossed a chasm in 2017, and that 23% of respondents have implemented it, with an additional 30% planning to do so by the end of 2018.

The importance of connectivity is clearly seen in another of the most important areas of expansion for unlicensed spectrum technologies, the connected city. This has been a focus for the WBA in recent years, with its Connected City Advisory Board forging strong links between city leaders and the wireless industry. WBA chair JR Wilson selects the Connected City Blueprint, published this year, as one of the Association’s key achievements of 2017.

The report provides a detailed analysis of the connected city opportunity for all players in the complex value chain, from citizens to wireless service providers to city authorities. It highlights key services, some of which - like smart lighting – may be ‘leader use cases’, ones which can justify the deployment of new infrastructure, on which further services can be layered. For the Internet of Things (IoT), Wi-Fi, as well as LPWAN technologies are providing a powerful way to connect city infrastructure and devices at low cost and high efficiency.

All these new use cases will be enhanced as wireless technologies continue to evolve their capabilities. New Wi-Fi standards are extending these capabilities - 802.11ax will support high density and better control over QOS. Wi-Fi will be an increasingly integral part of the wider wireless platform in the 5G era and is targeting many of the same use cases as the 5G movement in general. These will be underpinned by seamless, secure and interoperable networks that deliver three essentials:

• enhanced wireless broadband

• mission critical performance for services like public safety

• massive numbers of IoT devices.

This increasingly variegated platform drives the requirement for coexistence between cellular and unlicensed technologies, with close integration at core and even radio level, and a harmonized migration path both to 5G and future IEEE 802 standards.

The WBA’s CEO Shrikant Shenwai said, when launching the Alliance’s recent white paper on 5G use cases, that the WBA was studying what “we as an organization can do to bridge the gap between licensed and unlicensed technologies within this timeframe [to 2020].” This is a central role for the WBA in the coming years, and it is particularly targeting connected cities and other IoT applications like security monitoring as areas where Wi-Fi will play a key role.


3


This is not just about converging technology roadmaps, but about allowing service providers to tap into all types of spectrum in a unified way to increase overall capacity and QoS. As well as additional unlicensed spectrum, it will be essential that operators can use existing bands more efficiently, by aggregating licensed and unlicensed through LTE/Wi-Fi interworking, by sharing spectrum more dynamically, and by harnessing new antenna techniques such as beamforming, which allow signals to be directed more accurately towards the recipient.

In conclusion, the report highlights how the expansion of wireless use cases, enabled by new technologies and spectrum in the unlicensed and shared bands, will lay the foundations for the 5G era, in which Wi-Fi, and the WBA, will play a central role.


4


1 Introduction

Every year, the scope of the WBA’s annual report expands as Wi-Fi becomes an increasingly central part of wireless connectivity across a wide range of industry sectors and use cases. In 2017, the industry’s attention is inevitably turning to 5G, the next generation of wireless networks, in which unlicensed spectrum technologies like Wi-Fi will play a critical role.

WBA has been assessing the needs of individual verticals and although many verticals are benefitting from the plethora of wireless technologies, going forward the WBA will increasingly bring a lens to focus on:

• Carrier and service provider ecosystem

• Connected Cities

• Hospitality & Enterprise

• Retail

1.1 Carriers & Service Providers

In the past few years, carrier Wi-Fi has become a natural part of both network and business strategies both for mobile network operators (MNOs) and wireline or converged operators such as cable providers. For cable operators, especially in the US and western Europe, Wi-Fi has taken center stage in wireless/mobility strategies with the proliferation of managed home-spots and public hotspots.

For MNOs, carrier Wi-Fi was initially used to offload cellular traffic to reduce cost and relieve pressure on the macro network, but as Wi-Fi deployments have become more and more reliable and secure thanks to the next generation hotspots, carriers have made Wi-Fi central to their business models and their overall customer experience strategies. Wi-Fi helps reduce churn and generate new revenues from roaming or expanded service bundles. There is also increasing use of a mixture of cellular and Wi-Fi technologies in unlicensed and emerging shared spectrum options, such as the CBRS (Citizens’ Broadband Radio Service) band in the US. The WBA has produced a white paper on Coordinated Shared Spectrum which addresses these trends.1

Wi-Fi is no longer the playing field of carriers alone but has also become a necessity in many enterprises and industries.

1 https://www.wballiance.com/resource/coordinated-shared-spectrum/

https://www.wballiance.com/resource/coordinated-shared-spectrum/


5


1.2 Hospitality, Retail & Enterprise

For businesses that, just like telcos, are seeking to differentiate themselves around customer experience, it is essential to offer customers high quality connectivity at all times, and Wi-Fi can support this. For example, studies show that Wi-Fi has become the number one amenity sought by hotel guests and a vital criterion when selecting a hotel. At the same time, hotels and brands use Wi-Fi to collect valuable data on their customer journey, which they use to achieve marketing, sales and operational objectives.

Equally, shoppers expect to use their mobile devices while in the store to compare prices, use coupons, and browse customer product reviews and features, as part of their retail experience. Malls and stores need to enable this, and in addition, the more shoppers who use Wi-Fi while in the store, the more data and analytics can be collected. This in turn can be used to improve their customers’ shopping experience, and bricks and mortar retailers to fight back against online giants such as Amazon.

These sectors are just examples of areas where Wi-Fi is having a significant and growing impact on business success. Some trends will increase that impact further. For instance, the emergence of the all-wireless office is seeing some companies even turning their Ethernet dark in favor of wireless. That means that Wi-Fi has become vital in most enterprise environments and will continue to enable new ways of working and supporting customers, as vertical industries begin to plan their own 5G strategies.

1.3 Connected Cities

For many cities around the globe, Wi-Fi is a natural choice to start delivering internet access to unconnected citizens. Wi-Fi is often the technology that is used to underpin the initial uses cases and deployments in smart city projects, creating an affordable platform on which further applications can be layered and providing access to services.

These are not the only sectors – healthcare, banking, logistics and others all seek to provide access to information for consumers and improve the productivity and communications of staff and will continue to see demand grow.

The WBA has been very active in working to define the ways in which Wi-Fi, and unlicensed spectrum more generally, will contribute to the 5G platform. Many elements which will be central to 5G are already taking shape in the Wi-Fi world, such as:

Millimeter wave (high frequency) spectrum (WiGig runs in 60 GHz),

Aggregation of multiple spectrum bands and spectrum sharing

Edge-based context aware architectures based on small cells

Virtualized networks with cloud-based controlling infrastructure


6


Ultra-low latency

Increased area traffic capacity (802.11ax)

Enhanced QoS and user policy differentiation

Unlicensed spectrum will be essential for 5G to achieve its goals of supporting higher data rates, greater device density and new Internet of Things services. The WBA has also played an active role in driving innovation on how spectrum can be shared in unlicensed, coordinated or dynamic environments, to add significantly to the total available capacity for both near term requirements and more specifically the longer term emerging standards from IEEE.

Such technical and spectrum developments will create the next generation wireless platform, delivering enhanced levels of efficiency, bandwidth, quality of service and cost-effectiveness. But even more important than the platform are the business models it drives. The evolution of Wi-Fi and other unlicensed technologies, since the last WBA annual report, are already supporting new ways for consumers to use data and for operators to monetize it. That evolution will continue in the coming years, enabled by further enhancement to Wi-Fi platforms and by the emergence of a multi-RAT (radio access technology) 5G.

The annual survey of the Wi-Fi ecosystem, whose key findings are included in this report, highlight the widening variety of business models which can be enabled by an advanced wireless network. While supporting high quality, low cost internet access remains the anchor model, Wi-Fi providers are looking to harness new developments, such as enhanced security and ultra-low power technologies, to address additional revenue streams.

This report will examine in detail the critical elements of that process of evolving a platform which is broad enough to support many use cases and verticals; unified enough to support a wide and competitive ecosystem; but capable of being tailored to any number of specific scenarios to ensure a good experience.

This will involve:

Enhancement of the Wi-Fi technologies and frameworks, and how these are monetized

Adaptation of unlicensed spectrum systems for key vertical such as smart cities, increasingly by integrating Wi-Fi with other unlicensed networks such as LPWANs, or with cellular


7


Building networks which meet current needs, but also lay foundations to ensure smooth migration to next generation systems including virtualized architectures, 5G and IoT

Driving progress in spectrum and regulation, to achieve large quantities of unlicensed spectrum globally and so enable new experiences and use cases, but also to ensure optimal efficiency in existing bands, through techniques like carrier aggregation and multi-RAT coexistence

All these emerge in the annual survey as important factors in the Wi-Fi business case, and with the WBA coordinating and facilitating these efforts, unlicensed spectrum technologies will be assured a pivotal role in next generation wireless and 5G. Enjoy!


8


An Interview with JR Wilson, Chairman of the Wireless Broadband Alliance

Interview: JR Wilson, Chair WBA

Looking back on 2017, what do you consider the most significant achievements of the WBA?

The Connected City Advisory Board (CCAB) is going extremely well and a new version of the Connected City Blueprint will be released in Q4 2017 The Blueprint helps cities develop a framework around what their city could look like and provides case studies and tools to help them achieve their vision. The next step is to go more deeply into connectivity planning, especially with multiple radio access technologies.

The WBA also released its 5G white paper in September, outlining how Wi-Fi and unlicensed spectrums can contribute to 5G definitions and framework. It also highlights what the WBA can do to bridge the gap between licensed and unlicensed technologies.

In October, the WBA announced the Carrier Wireless Service Certification Program (CWSC). If we have a key core competency at WBA, it is in developing end-to-end frameworks for companies to work within. This program allows carriers and vendors to conduct end-to-end testing and certify devices independently, initially for Wi-Fi roaming and Wi-Fi offload, and we will add other functions next year. The CWSC was born from the many successful Next Generation Hotspot (NGH) trials and demos, and it continues the WBA’s commitment to develop and grow the Wi-Fi ecosystem.

I’d like to mention one more achievement, which is not specific to the WBA but rather indicates the value of Wi-Fi for everybody. During the recent hurricanes and the Mexican earthquakes, which impacted cell networks, many companies and organizations opened hundreds of thousands of hotspots throughout the impacted regions for all people to use.

The wireless industry has seen a great deal of change in 2017. In which areas do you believe the WBA has had the biggest influence on that change?

One of the key changes we’ve seen is the emergence of various approaches to bringing high-quality wireless broadband to all, whether that means to citizens of large cities or to those in remote or underserved areas. The WBA’s World Wi-Fi Day, launched in 2016 by the CCAB, has played a powerful role in highlighting the role that Wi-Fi plays in enabling connectivity for everyone.

A key starting point is understanding who the unconnected are and where they are located. Millions of unconnected people live where we would expect them to be connected. As a part of World Wi-Fi Day, the WBA sponsored a study, conducted by IHS Markit, to shed light on the state of the digital divide in the world’s eight richest economies by GDP: Brazil, China,


9


Germany, India, Japan, Russia, the U.K. and the U.S.). The study found that 1.75 billion citizens in those countries remain unconnected – with 34% residing in major urban areas. The good news is that Wi-Fi is playing an instrumental role in helping cities bring wider and more affordable connectivity to its citizens.

How does the WBA help companies in the wireless ecosystem solve some important business issues with current initiatives/ programs?

A couple of initiatives come to mind.

The IoT New Vertical Value Chains and Interoperability White Paper was released in March. The white paper describes how NGH and Passpoint help facilitate the adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) services by building new levels of discovery, security and efficiency on the established hotspot model.

The WBA also released a Quality of Service (QoS) on Carrier Wi-Fi report in April. This report outlines the need for standardization and industry collaboration to achieve guaranteed QoS on unlicensed spectrum technologies, which will be essential to many Wi-Fi business models.

Also, the WBA released a white paper on NGH provisioning which we believe will address many of the key issues which providers have. This was reinforced by the NGH Live deployment as part of the Mobile World Congress Americas conference 2017.

The WBA’s focus has broadened over the years to address convergence issues and IoT. How does the organization prioritize its work items, and what are the key and current areas of focus?

This is an organizational challenge. If you just broaden the scope without refining the focus, you risk biting off more than you can chew. So, we really prioritize each project in terms of its importance from a pure business perspective. We solicit members about the business importance of each project and they vote on the projects each year. Those with the most membership support move forward.

A good example of a project we selected is the role of Wi-Fi in enabling the IoT and extending NGH into that realm. Other projects completed this year illustrate our focus. For instance, the IoT New Vertical Value Chains and Interoperability white paper published in March and the Coordinated Shared Spectrum (CSS) white paper released in April. Both are business focused. The CSS paper looks at the services and business models that could be enabled by Licensed Shared Access in Europe or the Citizen Band Radio Service (CBRS) scheme in the U.S.

The 5G and QoS white papers mentioned above and the CWSC also represent important areas of activity.


10


Given that broader remit, is there a risk that the WBA loses sight of specific Wi-Fi issues? What important issues still need to be addressed?

Promoting seamless, secure and interoperable Next Gen Wi-Fi is at the heart of the WBA and will remain our central and uniting focus. This is just the beginning for Wi-Fi. 5G will be all about edge-based broadband, where Wi-Fi is affordable and complements longer range cellular. Next Gen Wi-Fi, along with other unlicensed technologies, will be a key enabler in IoT, 5G and bridging the digital divide in our Smart Cities – in other words, all the additional areas on which the WBA is focusing share Wi-Fi at their core.

Could you give us an update on the progress of the Connected City Advisory Board and, more generally, what developments you see around the world in smart cities?

It’s been a great year for the Connected City Advisory Board (CCAB). The Joint Venture Silicon Valley joined the CCAB this year in May. Overall, over 13 cities have joined including Moscow, Skolkovo, Newcastle, Northumberland, and Bristol is Open. In addition, this year’s WBA Awards will include three related to World Wi-Fi Day.

I’ve mentioned some of the specific projects of the CCAB, but there are some more general points to make as well. Smart cities are very focused on providing municipal connectivity in areas of citizen engagement, transportation, infrastructure and public safety. This could include the ability to manage street lights remotely, monitor water conservation, or use IoT technology to help utilities give their customers up-to-date data on their energy usage to help them keep tabs on their bills. These projects should not take place in isolation. Knowledge sharing between cities, so that city leaders can understand business cases and learn from others’ experiences, is the area of greatest benefit and progress for CCAB. We are also instrumental in bringing together public and private enterprises for mutual benefit.

Another specific example is the City Wi-Fi Roaming project, which was coordinated by WBA as part of World Wi-Fi Day. This project enabled visitors to automatically and securely roam between Wi-Fi networks in 17 cities around the globe from June until August. Among the cities included were Barcelona, Dublin, Singapore, Moscow and New York. City Wi-Fi Roaming was named by Global Telecoms Business Magazine as one of the Top 50 projects to watch.

Next year we plan to keep building on the success of World Wi-Fi Day, with the WBA serving as a matchmaker – joining fundraisers and donors on projects bridging the digital divide.


11


In 2018, the first 5G standards will be finalized, setting the stage for deployments. What do you see Wi-Fi’s place being in 5G, and what role will the WBA have as operators start to make their 5G plans?

5G will be a combination of licensed and unlicensed technologies, with Wi-Fi and its future evolution playing a leading role. The WBA’s strategy is to actively embrace and address what its members and the wider ecosystem need to do to prepare for 5G, such as improved QoS and roaming frameworks.

The WBA’s track record of testing and interoperability will be important to provide a real-world, end-to-end testing environment for 5G unlicensed wireless building blocks that rely on a converged approach. We will bring our core competency in certifying the end-to-end customer experience to bear in 5G and IoT.

What are the most critical spectrum decisions that need to be made to enhance wireless services in the coming years, and how important will dynamic/shared spectrum be in future?

There is always a need for more spectrum, both licensed and unlicensed, as data consumption continues to grow. New frameworks for sharing will be essential, and there is plenty of healthy debate around that. Our white paper about Coordinated Shared Spectrum (CSS) offers an early stage analysis of these programs, contemplating service offerings and business models they could enable.

Of course, there is a lot of interest in millimeter wave bands because 5G will revolve around super-fast, edge-based networks, and there is already an ecosystem building around WiGig, the 802.11-based technology for the unlicensed mmWave band in 60 GHz.

Looking ahead, what are your key goals for the WBA in 2018?

Overall, we must keep refining the mission statement to place maximum emphasis on solving the most pertinent business issues. We want to be a truly business-focused trade association whose members see the potential for significant commercial impact from improved user experience, efficiencies, use cases and ROI.

Some specific initiatives include continuing to build on the success of World Wi-Fi Day. Our plans are for the WBA to work as matchmaker – joining fundraisers and donors on projects bridging the digital divide by forming a U.S.-based 5013c.

We will continue to work on the CCAB, with NGH certification for IoT devices a critical priority in 2018. We will also help ensure Wi-Fi is solidly positioned in the 5G framework as that develops.

And we will extend our core competencies to address industry gaps linked to service enablement – real world device trials and interoperability testing are examples of tools that can help members achieve a good customer experience and accelerate deployments.


12


From a strategic point of view, then, our priority is to make sure the WBA is focusing its resources on projects that help its members solve business problems and enable new business opportunities.

2 Wi-Fi Evolution & Monetization

2.1 Monetizing Wi-Fi Services

As Wi-Fi becomes part of “densification” with other networks or alone, new business models are slowly emerging to monetize it. These will go far beyond the current situation, in which mobile operators offload data to Wi-Fi, or fixed-line operators access licensed spectrum through MVNO deals.

Monetizing Wi-Fi optimally requires a broad approach and a mix of value added services. The approach of monetizing Wi-Fi with advertising alone has proven difficult and therefore a combination of offerings is needed to achieve a profitable formula.

For example, vendors which historically provided pure Wi-Fi offload solutions have generally broadened their portfolios to include venue management and Wi-Fi Calling, to respond to these complex market needs.

With the advance of passpoint and next generation hotspots, service providers can monetize their Wi-Fi networks by delivering a seamless connection to their customers in public venues if their devices are passpoint enabled. This enhancement improves customer experience and reduces churn. The same experience can be replicated while travelling abroad thanks to roaming agreements and back-end systems facilitated by the WBA. The WBA has a working group working on Wi-Fi monetization strategies as well and is releasing a new white paper in Q4 2017.

There are examples of successful introduction of Wi-Fi plans by MNOs which resulted in increasing ARPU for the MNO along with a reduction in connection costs. One such example is a Scandinavian operator which is using the inclusion of unlimited Wi-Fi plans to motivate customers to move up to higher value cellular data plans which include unlimited Wi-Fi, thus increasing the ARPU for the MNO.

Another potential opportunity lies in monetizing all the usage data which can be generated by Wi-Fi networks. However, while the question of how to use analytics to monetize the data is a critical one, the answer is not always straightforward. The Economist recently suggested that data is the new oil. The combination of increasing volumes of data and the emergence of machine learning is making the data easier to use and thus more valuable. But it can be unclear who owns the asset and therefore who can profit from it.


13


Carriers are not the only ones poised to leverage innovation in Wi-FI technolofies and networks. Verticals such as hospitality and retail rely heavily on best connected experience for their customers.

Across the retail, hospitality, service, leisure, and transport sectors, Wi-Fi has been deployed by venue and network owners as a means of improving the customer experience and increasingly, driving customer engagement and behavioural insights.

The reach of Wi-Fi into high footfall public places gives it potential as an enabler of location-targeted advertising. The unique advantage of public Wi-Fi is its ability to deliver beacon-style proximity capabilities at a scale which cannot be replicated by similar technology such as Bluetooth beacons.

2.2 High Density Deployments

High-density scenarios are places crowded with many users and terminals. Typical high-density scenarios include both permanent deployments – such as airports or stadiums – and temporary ones, for concerts and special events. A prime example is Mobile World Congress, which is as intense as it can be! We describe the MWC Americas deployment and results in more details in section 2.6.

In a high-density wireless network, the required throughput and number of client devices exceed the capacity of traditional coverage-oriented Wi-Fi networks. High density networks are primarily limited by the availability of airtime, as traditional network considerations—such as coverage, signal strength, and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)—are insufficient to overcome the capacity concerns. Since all users of a Wi-Fi network must share the same medium of transmission (air), a high number of client devices means a high number of users that must share airspace, and thus compete for limited airtime.

The IEEE 802.11ax spec is particularly geared to high density, high throughput environments such as stadiums or large apartment blocks, boosting data rates and allowing more simultaneous clients to be supported. It is primarily for indoor use – outdoor operation will be limited to stationary and pedestrian speeds.

While most Wi-Fi standards focus on the data capacity of a whole network shared by multiple users, 11ax will address and boost the actual data rate to each individual device. With this standard, it is anticipated to increase that speed at least fourfold and to ratify the specifications in 2018. Some of the technologies which are likely to be harnessed will also be part of the next wave of cellular standards e.g. MIMO-OFDA, dynamic spectrum allocation, interference coordination and hybrid access techniques. Meanwhile, 802.11ay will aim to boost the speeds of 60 GHz WiGig to 40Gbps and beyond.


14


The WBA members have a lot of experience in deploying and managing Wi-Fi networks in dense and challenging RF environments. As an organization, the WBA is keen on sharing those best practices with the rest of the market including the recent development of a Wi-Fi Deployment Guidelines Check List.

2.3 In-Home Wi-Fi Experience and Smart Home Opportunities

There has recently been a lot of announcements around improving the residential Wi-Fi market capabilities. These innovations are happening on two fronts. The first is focused on better coverage through mesh networks or easier-to-add access nodes. The second involves offering network based services such as security or parental controls through Wi-Fi routers.

Mesh networks aim to solve problems with coverage, largely within the home. 802.11s is an IEEE 802.11 amendment for mesh networking, defining how wireless devices can interconnect to create a WLAN mesh. Wireless mesh network devices (Mesh STAs) form links with one another, over which mesh paths can be established using an ad hoc mobile routing protocol. A key aspect of this architecture is the presence of multi-hop wireless links and routing of packets through other nodes towards the destination nodes.

In the traditional approach to mesh, hops introduce latency, and reduce throughput. Several vendors are trying to provide their own methodology to solving the coverage/capacity trade-off.

There is increasing availability of mesh network gateways with a core gateway and either nodes or repeaters that go with it; in many cases, the package the consumer gets has three or four devices the underlying principle is simple: a centralized gateway architecture with a multi-node mesh solution provides coverage throughout the home, with nodes placed, for instance, on an upstairs floor, the main floor and maybe the garage or a basement, creating a resilient network. If one node goes down, another is there in the mesh.

One example is Plume, who are deploying their solution with US cable operator Comcast, with the aim of resolving not only the coverage problem but also the need to provide more visibility to ISPs of what is going on inside the home. Plume has some heavyweight investors which include Comcast, Liberty Global, Shaw Cable, Japan Cable, among others. Plume delivers a network management layer with a unified control plane which allows for dynamic resource management, self-optimizing to avoid/reduce interference, band steering and load balancing.

On the silicon side, Qualcomm announced in June its Mesh Networking Platform, which not only recognizes the forthcoming 802.11ax standard but also pays heed to talking assistants like Amazon’s Alexa, Google Home and Samsung’s new Bixby. It claims over


15


90% of OEMs are already using its mesh reference design including Linksys, Google, Samsung, TP-Link, ASUS, Plum, Ubiquity.

2.4 Device Usability and Experience

The global mobile workforce is set to increase from 1.3 billion in 2014, accounting for 37.4% of the global workforce, to 1.75 billion in 2020, according to the International Labour Organization. For those billions of mobile users, working both inside and outside of the traditional office, mobility has become synonymous with productivity.

In a data-driven world, mobile workers need high-speed, high-quality internet connectivity for a host of business tasks, including downloading presentations, sharing large files, and accessing cloud-based applications and Unified Communications tools. And when it comes to getting connected, mobile workers have already shown a clear preference for Wi-Fi over cellular networks, which are more expensive. In fact, Wi-Fi, now carries more than half of all mobile data according to Cisco VNI.

The connectivity to public Wi-Fi networks continues to be an inconsistent despite the adoption of Hotspot 2.0 but offers the opportunity for the WBA to implement its vision for NGHs. The vision was to make switching between Wi-Fi hotspots as seamless an experience for the user as that of handover between mobile cells—no human intervention required (or at least far less). The WBA’s vision for this is Next Generation Hotspot (NGH) and they and its membership have been focused on achieving this vision. The Passpoint program from the WFA on the device and equipment complements the work done by the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) on the end-to-end side. Together, the two systems support seamless authentication, giving users a single log-in and a cellular-like convenience for both SIM and non-SIM devices whether they are just on Wi-Fi or also roaming onto cellular. As of September 2017, the WFA indicated to Maravedis that it had certified 1,800 devices (both access points and mobile devices). Using Passpoint, the device can automatically query Hotspot 2.0 access points as to whether there is a roaming agreement between its network provider and the venue, and log on automatically if so with no intervention required from the user. Support for 802.11u in the access point means the AP can broadcast its capabilities to devices. NGH focuses on service capabilities, standardizing the billing, provisioning and policy aspects.

Operating system (OS) providers such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft also need to provide the necessary support to enable their devices for NGH provisioning. A recent WBA whitepaper outlines essential and optional updates across all elements of the NGH chain, including the user equipment (UE) OS, the various network standards, access points, Wireless Access Gateways (WAGs), AAA (authentication, authorization, and accounting) server, and OSU (Online Sign-Up) server. Furthermore, the framework introduces a new network element called the Secure In-line Provisioning Server (SILP) to handle provisioning


16


in legacy 802.1x networks. The details of SILP are set to be defined in a future version of the WBA whitepaper.

The Wi-Fi Alliance has recently launched an enhanced version of their Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Vantage program, with two new CERTIFICATION programs: Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Agile Multiband and Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Optimized Connectivity. The whole aim of the Vantage program is to reduce complexity while ensuring better connectivity. Wi-Fi Vantage is the umbrella term that incorporates the actual technologies of the program.

The WBA work on NGH includes provisioning and channel aggregation between mobile and Wi-Fi and provides the umbrella that enables end-to-end networks to take full advantages of the ecosystem of passpoint certified devices included within the Wi-Fi Roaming Standard (WBA WRIX).

2.5 Enterprise Cloud-Managed Wi-Fi

In the past decade, Wi-Fi has become the dominant access method in the enterprise. The emergence of "wireless-first" enterprises, where all possible devices and applications run on wireless connections, represents a large opportunity for providers of cloud-managed Wi-Fi-as-a-service.

Businesses of all sizes are increasingly relying on all-wireless office spaces and they are ready to pay for someone else to deal with making sure the networks are running optimally. According to IDC, cloud-managed WLAN is the fastest-growing segment of the enterprise WLAN market. In fact, the market for cloud-managed enterprise WLAN infrastructure and managed services is expected to triple from 2015 to 2020, growing from $1.1 billion to $3.3 billion2. Cloud-managed enterprise WLAN is performing particularly well in distributed and midmarket enterprises, where IT management is centralized but IT resources are dispersed, often meaning that there is little day-to-day onsite support for the network.

For several years, cloud-managed Wi-Fi has been used to simplify the deployment and management of Wi-Fi networks. With ever-improving cloud technologies, it is now possible to realize true web scale for the WLAN market. Further, advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and big data analytics offer even better solutions to deploy, manage, and automate WLAN networks, at a lower cost than ever before. With these technological leaps, WLAN providers can shift their focus from solving infrastructure challenges to delivering a better and more reliable user experience. This is turn can empower businesses with distributed presence such as retailers and hotels to leverage

2 Making the Business Case for Cloud-Managed Wi-Fi as a Service (July 2017 IDC)


17


big data from across their footprint and generate a comprehensive understanding of their guests and customers.

AI applied to Wi-Fi promises to solve a significant problem, which is the cost of troubleshooting the many potential connection problems that can occur from a wide range of sources. From RF interference, to Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)to Domain Name Servers (DNS )issues, operators and IT staff have the challenge of constantly monitoring and identifying the real source of the problem. For instance, they could be looking at a Layer 2 issue when in fact it is a networking problem. And of course, there are the costs associated with troubleshooting and support calls and associated downtime for enterprises, consumers and the service providers themselves.

Some research from KodaCloud and Mojo Networks has determined that one in 10 enterprise network users experience Wi-Fi downtime at least once a week, which adds up to costs of $2 million/year for a typical 10,000-employee company. Network admins spend 50% of their time troubleshooting and resolving user-reported “Wi-Fi issues.” Therefore, machine learning will help IT managers to resolve Wi-Fi technical issues more efficiently and effectively. The processing and data power that enables machine learning is only available at scale and low cost in the cloud. This means better and cheaper to manage Wi-Fi networks.

In the digital world we now live in, Wi-Fi is no longer an amenity—it has taken on the role of an indispensable utility. Because of this, it is more important than ever to ensure Wi-Fi is flexible and scalable. In doing so, businesses will be poised to benefit from emerging Wi-Fi opportunities such as location-based services.

2.6 Wi-Fi Roaming

The global mobile workforce is set to increase from 1.3 billion in 2014, accounting for 37.4% of the global workforce, to 1.75 billion in 2020, according to various sources. Globalization will continue to drive the growth of mobile office workers in all regions as executives, consultants, sales & field professionals, and other mobile professionals of multinational corporations proliferate. For those billions of mobile users, working both inside and outside of the traditional office, mobility has become synonymous with productivity.

In a data-driven world, mobile workers need high-speed, high-quality Internet connectivity for a host of business tasks, including downloading presentations, sharing large files, and accessing cloud-based applications and Unified Communications tools. And when it comes to getting connected, mobile workers have already shown a clear preference for Wi-Fi over cellular networks, which are more expensive. In fact, Wi-Fi, now


18


carries half of all mobile data as shown in the 2017 Cisco VNI model and Maravedis projections.

According to these projections, public Wi-Fi hotspots (including home-spots) will grow six-fold from 2016 to 2021, from 94.0 million in 2016 to 541.6 million by 2021. Total Wi-Fi home-spots will grow from 85.1 million in 2016 to 526.2 million by 2021. Home-spots or community hotspots are a significant part of the public Wi-Fi strategy. The public Wi-Fi hotspots include public Wi-Fi commercial hotspots and home-spots.

Source: Maravedis, Cisco VNI Mobile, 2017

Wi-Fi access has been widely accepted by MNOs globally, and it has evolved to complement mobile networks-and used for offloading from expensive cellular networks on to lower-cost-per-bit Wi-Fi networks.


19


Source: Cisco VNI Mobile, 2017

The WBA has done a lot of work to facilitate seamless Wi-Fi roaming between the various stakeholders. Its work includes the WRIX (Wireless Roaming Intermediary eXchange) which offers a modularized set of standard service specifications to facilitate commercial roaming between operators.

It includes WRIX-i (Interconnect), WRIX-l (Location) WRIX-d (Data Clearing) and WRIX-f (Financial Settlement). Each of these can be deployed by Visited Network Providers (VNPs) and Home Service Providers (HSPs) either in-house or through an intermediary WRIX service provider. The latest release of WRIX includes support for EAP authentication providing the transport and indicating which radius attributes to use. This specification recommends Network operators support the following EAP methods: EAP-SIM, EAP-AKA, EAP-TLS, and EAP-TTLS. Other EAP methods may be supported transparently by the VNP but are not part of this specification.

Source: WRIX Standard Service Specification for Interaction among WBA Members Umbrella doc


20


2.7 Wi-Fi Roaming Case Study: AT&T

AT&T has been a highly enthusiast adopter of Wi-Fi roaming and has garnered great results from its initiative. As a market leader in all things roaming, A&T has developed a Business Model simulator which allows operators members of the WBA to run business model simulations based on a number of roaming variables.

Drivers

AT&T wanted to address the silent roamers among its customer base while delivering them a seamless experience. At the same time, AT&T needed to optimize cost and revenues associated with Wi-Fi roaming.

Building the Service

AT&T created integrated offers by adding Wi-Fi to its international data offers while building an international Wi-Fi roaming footprint through bilateral, unilateral and aggregator agreements.

Now, customers with International Packages, in addition to an allowance of cellular minutes, messages and megabytes, also enjoy seamless access to over 18 million hotspots in 100+ countries. These hotspots include close to a million venue-based hotspots (airports, hotels, cafés, etc) and over 16 million “homespots”. The company also includes, in the Wi-Fi Finder portion of the AT&T Global Wi-Fi app, the location of 1.5 million public hotspots; and it has 60+ roaming agreements. Most of the roaming agreements are international although some are domestic too.

AT&T found a technology partner to build a Wi-Fi client to provide seamless connections using cellular credentials.

AT&T’s International Data Plans:


21


Results

The results have been very positive according to AT&T, which claims soaring usage in terms of the number of roamers, roaming data consumption (including cellular) and retention rate. As long as the cost of Wi-Fi wholesale remains lower than cellular data (25-50% lower), the model works and AT&T plans to expand its footprint, as well as the adoption of Passpoint profiles into client devices, especially on iOS. AT&T has its own application to discover and authenticate into partner Wi-Fi networks.

AT&T Wi-Fi Roaming Growth:

MNOs are no longer interested in paying voice service per minute or data per Mb because:

VoLTE will soon replace traditional voice and will be included in data packages

MNOs require better support to offer more attractive roaming packages including unlimited data offers with more flexible retail offers

Establishing a roaming agreement is still a long process resulting in Wi-Fi roaming revenue not yet achieving its full potential. The reasons are many: identifying a potential partner who is not an active member of the WBA can be tricky in the first place; ensuring the potential partner abides by the requirements needed to establish a successful bilateral agreement requires also a great of work and time. There are the technical, business, financial and legal steps that must be overcome, and in turn a clear view of the potential return on investment of all the total investment in time.

The WBA has made it easier to negotiate and implement those roaming deals between WBA members by setting the specific guidelines detailed in the WRIX standard which also


22


handles the technical aspects of roaming. As a reminder, WRIX includes WRIX-i (Interconnect), WRIX-l (Location) WRIX-d (Data Clearing) and WRIX-f (Financial Settlement). Each of these can be deployed by Visited Network Providers (VNPs) and Home Service Providers (HSPs) either in-house or through an intermediary WRIX service provider.

However, for roaming agreements between WBA members and non-members, challenges remain.

Syniverse (with the help of Bandwidth X) are working on facilitating that marketplace exchange. BandwidthX is the company which has pioneered a cloud-based B2B marketplace to match service providers with available Wi-Fi capacity on an on-demand, pay-per-use basis while Syniverse is involved in international Wi-Fi roaming deployments.

The initiative is designed to encourage cities, government bodies, fixed and mobile operators, vendors, web platforms and service providers, as well as retailers, to support a universal connectivity model. Service providers are increasingly combining Wi-Fi and cellular in roaming packages, and by joining the BandwidthX trading platform with Syniverse’s IP roaming hub, this presents a genuinely viable alternative to carriers’ own offerings. Among its offerings, Syniverse has Wi-Fi Roaming eXchange, which aims to make “mobile Wi-Fi roaming as seamless as 3G/4G data roaming.”

2.8 Case Study: Boingo’s Convergence Strategy

Boingo is a champion of network convergence and a neutral host provider of Wi-Fi, DAS (Distributed Antenna Systems), and small cells. The company’s strategy is to acquire long-term wireless rights at large venues like airports, transportation hubs, stadiums, arenas, military bases and other commercial properties; build high-quality wireless networks at those venues and monetize the networks through unique products and services. Boingo’s wireless networks reach more than a billion consumers annually.

In 2016, Boingo reported revenue of $159.3 million, with key growth drivers including its DAS, military and carrier offload businesses. As of Nov. 2, 2017, the company had 22,200 DAS nodes live and another 11,000 in backlog. Its military business, Boingo Broadband, has been deployed on 58 domestic bases for a total footprint of 324,000 beds (potential customers). As cellular networks become strained due to capacity, carriers like Sprint are offloading their licensed mobile traffic onto Boingo’s unlicensed networks.

Wi-Fi

With more than one million hotspots, Boingo keeps people connected around the world. Boingo’s Wi-Fi deployments are based on 802.11, a, b, g, n and ac technologies and operate in the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz unlicensed bands. Its retail business enables individuals


23


to purchase Internet access at Boingo’s managed and operated hotspots and select partner locations around the world.

Passpoint

Boingo, a pioneer in Passpoint, demonstrated at the inaugural 2017 Mobile World Congress Americas event that Hotspot 2.0 technology is thriving. More than 60 percent of attendees’ Wi-Fi connections were automatically authenticated through Passpoint, alleviating operator networks without sacrificing the users’ connected experience. Attendees used an average of 3.6 TB of data per day (and over 7.6TB in total) when using the guest Wi-Fi and experienced average Wi-Fi speeds of over 50 Mbps. AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile customers were among those who roamed onto the event’s Passpoint network seamlessly and securely.

Neutral-Host Strategy

Boingo is a leader in deploying neutral host networks. Each venue has its own characteristics and requirements and so Boingo will deploy the appropriate wireless technology based on the needs of each unique property. Venue owners are increasingly willing to fund part of the network cost as they see the value of a better-connected building or venue.

With the emergence of CBRS and spectrum sharing, small cells will become a viable choice in mid-sized to smaller venues and buildings.

Network Virtualization

Boingo’s plan has been migrating its network architecture to a more virtualized environment. In 2014, the company started its SMART (Secure, Multi-platform, Analytics-driven, and Tiered) network deployment in major airports. Access point controllers for the airports are deployed in a cloud environment where they can be shared across multiple facilities. SMART architecture enables Boingo to offer tiered services to its customers and better manage user traffic while reducing infrastructure costs.

Boingo has been busy deploying mobile edge computing with virtual network business functions and have used it for Wi-Fi. Ninety percent of Boingo’s data center is virtualized.

Network Convergence

Since 2001, Boingo has been a pioneer in wireless connectivity, driving innovation in both licensed and unlicensed spectrum. To power next generation networks, Boingo is a strong advocate for convergence. Boingo believes 5G will be based on the unified aggregation of multiple bands, including the convergence of licensed and unlicensed spectrum. According to CTO Dr. Derek Peterson, Wi-Fi in particular is crucial for enabling next


24


generation networks the ability to handle 5G requirements that include one gigabyte of speed, one millisecond of latency and extraordinary user demand.

Today, Boingo operates Convergence 1.0 networks where Wi-Fi, DAS and small cells are deployed within a venue. In the future, Boingo will look to Convergence 2.0, where licensed and unlicensed bands will be blended through a centralized controller.

Conclusion

Boingo is a neutral-host network provider of connectivity solutions for in-building environments. With mobile data continuing to skyrocket, buildings and venues can turn to Boingo to launch and manage hyper-dense wireless networks to satisfy connectivity demands.


25


3 The Evolution of Connected Cities

Smart cities represent the ultimate urban development vision. The aim is to optimize the management of a city’s assets to improve sustainability and the citizens’ quality of life. In most cases, smart cities are long term strategic projects, which involve the establishment of proper technology infrastructures; and subsequently the development of services that alleviate urbanization pressures and depletion of resources, while at the same time supporting the citizens’ changing lifestyles.

3.1 Vertical Smart City Applications

Smart Cities are more than just the implementation of various technologies. “Smart” does not only refer to technology or sensors - it is a concept and new kind of culture for how cities and its agencies can work more effectively internally, with partner agencies, organizations and, of course, with their citizens. “Smart” is a way of transforming from the way things have always been done because that’s the way we did them, to thoughtfully considering what should be done based on analytics, metrics and adjusting the goals/mission of the city and various agencies based on that analysis, while continuing to update those goals as new and more relevant data is captured and analyzed. Smart Cities are not a destination to arrive at, but a new process for managing how cities and agencies work.

The most typical smart city applications can be found in the following vertical areas:

Smart transport and urban mobility, such as applications for discovering optimal transport routes in the city, traffic management applications, smart parking systems and more.

Smart energy, including applications for grid balancing and optimization, establishment and management of micro-grids, as well as entire urban areas operating based on RES (Renewable Energy Sources).

Smart water management applications, which emphasize the timely detection of problems (e.g., leakages) and the subsequent enforcement of remedial actions, but also the optimization of the water utility network.

Urban security and safety applications, such as applications that leverage multiple sensors (e.g., surveillance cameras and drones) as a means of detecting and confronting security incidents. Other classical security applications, include street lighting and management of CCTV (Closed Circuit TeleVision) cameras.


26


Smart working applications, which facilitate citizens in commuting, but also in working regardless of their location in the city (e.g., through offering internet connectivity and appropriate working spaces).

Smart healthcare applications, such as applications that provide support and manage the lifestyles of older adults, including a broad spectrum of ambient assisted living applications.

This list of applications is indicative rather than exhaustive. Moreover, the listed applications contribute to confronting issues stemming from the rapid urbanization, such as the need for optimizing resource usage and alleviating security incidents.

Source: Connected City Blueprint Q4 2017

3.2 Citizens’ Engagement

The vast majority of vertical applications in urban environment can be directly enhanced based on the active engagement of the citizens. As a prominent example, smart energy and smart water management applications can provide citizens with incentives for economizing on resource usage, as a means of reducing their expenses and contributing to optimal environmental performance. Incentives can be provided in the form of monetary benefits, but also in the scope of serious games i.e. based on the gamification of the resource usage.

As another example, citizen engagement can enable a host of novel applications such as “prosumer” systems that enable citizens to act as producers of energy, in addition to being consumers. This is for instance the case with vehicle-to-grid systems, which allow citizens to store energy within their cars and provide it to the energy grid whenever required.


27


Citizen’ engagement can be seen as a natural extension to vertical applications, which demonstrates that smart cities needed to exploit not only technology, but also the city’s human capital as well. It should be also noted that citizens’ engagement is a key element of WBA’s vision for smart and connected cities.

3.3 Interoperability: “Breaking” the silos

The development and deployment of various vertical applications in the various cities has resulted in “siloed” deployments that do not interface to each other. This results in information and applications fragmentation, which limits cross-vertical application opportunities, while at the same time limiting the ROI (Return-on-Investment) on the very expensive smart city infrastructures.

The vision of connected cities involves the interoperability across different vertical applications, as means of repurposing and reusing infrastructures and datasets. Nowadays, interoperability is propelled by the emergence of a wide range of IoT interoperability standards, such as Hypercat. Smart city interoperability is also enabled by the deployment of a connectivity infrastructure that supports diverse devices and services.

Interoperability is also a key for enabling connected city ecosystems, which comprise diverse applications and platforms, typically based on different technologies.

3.4 Assessing the role of different technologies

The development of a proper infrastructure is among the most critical aspects of a city’s development plan for two main reasons. First, it is the backbone on which most services depend and as such it should provide scalability, reliability and quality of service. Second, it requires significant capital investments, which are hardly affordable for most cities. Hence, it is important to establish infrastructures that require the lowest possible deployment costs, while being able to scale in a cost-effective way.

The connected city technology landscape contains many different wireless access technologies and can seem bewildering to the uninitiated. The key is to understand that each wireless access technology is designed for a specific purpose, with a specific application or set of applications in mind. The application supported by a wireless access network technology depends on the design of the protocol, the frequency band of operation and the limitations enforced by local and international regulatory authorities.

From a technical perspective, these technological infrastructures fall in the realm of the Internet-of-Things (IoT), as they comprise broadband and wireless networks along with internet-connected devices such as sensors and smart objects legacy technologies such as Wi-Fi and cellular networks (3G/4G and LTE (Long Term Evolution)) already carry most of the

http://www.hypercat.io/


28


IoT traffic in cities. However, during the past couple of years we have also witnessed the rise of LPWAN (Low-power wide area network) technologies, which are disrupting the IoT infrastructure landscape and hold the promise of revolutionizing the deployment of smart cities as well.

LPWAN technologies enable specialized wireless wide area networks that interconnect devices that only require low-bandwidth connectivity, so they can prioritize range and power efficiency. There are many LPWAN technologies, which share the following common characteristics:

They support bi-directionality and cover larger areas than mainstream mobile networks, while consuming less power.

They are primarily targeted to support IoT and machine-to-machine (M2M) applications. Their low power and long range characteristics make them more suitable for IoT and smart city deployments, when compared to conventional mobile networks.

They feature low data transfer rates, which makes them suitable for devices that have low bandwidth requirements, typically devices that are less bandwidth savvy that standard home equipment.

They are ideal for communications in industrial environments with many devices, as they enable efficient communications at a low power and cost.

These characteristics render LPWAN technologies ideal for supporting smart city applications, notably applications that are based on numerous IoT devices such as smart energy and smart water management applications. Some of the most popular LPWAN technologies are (See Addendum for more details):


29


Technology Frequency Bandwidth Throughput Network Type Sample Applications

SigFox 865 / 900MHz

100Hz 100 bit/s Public

- Smart Metering - Street Light

Management - Remote Sensors - Location tracking - Security / Alarms

LoRa 865 / 900MHz

125KHz – 250kHz

< 50Kbit/s Operator / Private

- Smart Transport and urban mobility

- Smart energy - Smart water

management applications

NB-IoT LTE Freq. Bands

200kHz < 50 kbit/s Operator

- Urban security and safety applications

- Smart working applications

LTE-M LTE Freq. Bands

1.4MHz < 375 kbit/s Operator - M2M

Communications - VoLTE

Source: Connected City Blueprint Q4 2017

The above-listed LPWAN technologies are also able to support security sensitive applications, such as those involving critical infrastructures (e.g. energy, transport) or exchange of personal data (e.g. healthcare), thanks to its multi-level encryption schemes. For example, LoRaWAN offers encryption and security functionalities at the network, application and device levels.

LPWAN technologies should not be seen as a replacement for other IoT-related networking technologies. Rather, they are an excellent complement to other types of networks (e.g., 3G/4G, satellite), and this facilitates the interconnection of assets and devices that are dispersed across a wide area, including devices that are not properly


30


covered/supported by pre-existing cellular (or other) networking technologies. For example, NB-IoT and LTE are both specified by 3GPP to cover different networking needs in the LTE spectrum. Overall, LPWAN technologies complement existing networking infrastructures in smart cities, as a means of facilitating the rapid and cost-effective deployment of various IoT applications, which are hard to support cost on existing networks.

3.5 Smart City Applications

Wireless technologies can support a wide range of IoT applications in various sectors, as outlined above. In the case of smart cities, we can classify existing and emerging wireless applications in the following categories:

Vertical Applications: Sensors and other battery-assisted devices can be flexibly deployed in different urban settings such as roads, plants, buildings, homes and more. Wireless technologies provide the means of interconnecting these devices among themselves, but also with people and other IT systems. Hence, wireless can support several vertical applications in the smart city environment, such as smart traffic management and urban mobility optimizations, waste management, smart lighting for buildings and outdoor environments, predictive maintenance applications for city assets, as well as a wide range of environmental management applications. In addition other sectors benefit such as retail. The ability to support multiple vertical applications in smart cities, renders wireless technologies innovation enablers for vendors and integrators of IoT services.

Cross-Vertical Interoperable Applications: wireless technologies come with inherent interoperability functionalities for the devices that they connect to their gateways. This facilitates the use of wireless technologies, which combine data or services from devices that have been originally deployed for different (yet related) vertical applications. For example, urban transport and smart lighting applications can be combined to calculate city-wide sustainability metrics. Likewise, wireless technologies can facilitate repurposing and reusing devices across different vertical applications.

Innovative Applications and Testbeds: Currently, several organizations are implementing and deploying wireless infrastructures (e.g., LoRaWAN gateways) as a means of facilitating innovators in their IoT endeavors. Wireless technologies provide a compelling value proposition for open innovation, as they facilitate the design, development and deployment of IoT applications, while reducing the cost of their commercial roll-out and operation. For example, several community initiatives and innovative service providers are deploying LPWAN testbeds for innovators. These


31


include start-ups such as WYRES, which builds geolocation products based on LoRa, and LORIOT, which is developing LoRaWAN infrastructure and gateways.

Indoor applications: Wireless technologies such as LPWAN have penetration and geolocation capabilities that make them appropriate for supporting indoor applications in smart environments such as plants, warehouses, airports, railway stations, buildings and more. LPWAN technologies can be used for accurate non-GPS geolocation based on the Location as a service (LaaS), as a means of facilitating IoT integrators in implementing a rich set of location aware services.

3.6 Connected Cities Deployment Status

There are numerous smart city deployments around the globe as part of national and regional projects, which include pilot and production deployments. The latter span a large number of vertical applications in most of the areas identified previously. Furthermore, there are also many cases where cities integrate existing applications in cross-vertical deployments, which enable collaboration between stakeholders within a city, Despite the emergence of a wide range of IoT interoperability standards, there are several smart city deployments that rely on proprietary platforms. For example, an interoperability deployment has been carried out by the oneTRANSPORT initiative, which is a public-private initiative that builds an integrated intelligent transport system by combining data sources and IoT applications from 11 different organizations in the UK, including four counties and UK’s transport agency. oneTRANSPORT leverages a horizontal platform by InterDigital. As another example, Ruckus technology is offering a platform that utilizes multiple intelligent street light fixtures as Wi-Fi connection points for citizens in an integrated and interoperable way. These are only a few among hundreds of interoperable cross-vertical deployments that integrated diverse application and data sources within cities. In several cases, there have also been cities that have built integrated, deployments as part of a single large scale project, such as Bristol Is Open, voted the number 1 smart city in the UK

Beyond IoT systems and applications interoperability, we are also witnessing the emergence of “connected cities” deployments relative to the WBA and its CCAB’s vision. Connected city deployments emphasis is on interconnecting cities and providing cross-city connectivity to all citizens and applications. The most representative connected cities project is the latest City Wi-Fi Roaming Project, which connects the networks of major cities around the world. In particular, the project enables users of public Wi-Fi city networks to freely roam between them. The project was made available to subscribers from many operators in tens of different cities, including Barcelona (Spain), Birmingham (UK), Bradford (UK), Dublin (Ireland), Singapore, Kazan (Russia), Leeds (UK), Limerick (Ireland), Moscow, New York City (USA), Nizhny Novgorod (Russia), Perm (Russia), Saint-

https://www.linkedin.com/company/15080238/

https://www.loriot.io/

http://onetransport.uk.net/

http://www.interdigital.com/

https://www.ruckuswireless.com/

https://www.bristolisopen.com/bristol-uks-number-one-smart-city/

http://worldwifiday.com/city-wi-fi-roaming/


32


Petersburg, Samara (Russia), San Jose (USA), Sendai (Japan) and Yekaterinburg (Russia). Subscribers from a large list of operators were able to freely roam between these City Wi-Fi networks. The City Wi-Fi Roaming project is a pragmatic demonstration of WBA’s connected cities strategy, which encourages cities, government bodies, fixed and mobile operators, technology vendors, Internet enterprises, service providers, retailers and other stakeholders to collaborate in order to deliver inclusive connectivity to end-users. The project is empowered by roaming agreements between tens of operators in all of the above cities, as well as by CCAB’s blueprint on how to interconnect different cities.

WBA’s connectivity vision is the foundation for implementing integrated and interconnected applications in connected cities. In most cases, such applications will be empowered by some smart city platform such as the free, open source and LoRaWAN enabled Things Network and Cisco’s platform for Smart and Connected cities that is already deployed across several cities including Paris and Kansas City.

Beyond the City Wi-Fi roaming project that has demonstrated the potential of multi-national roaming agreements, there are also national deployments of connected cities, which demonstrate the cross-city connectivity concept within a single country. An excellent example, Netherlands is as of last year (June 2016) the world’s first country to deploy LoRA nationally.. The project was headed by Dutch operator KPN, which connected thousands of devices in the network, while using them in numerous IoT applications. LoRa technology is already used by multiple service providers in the country, such as those at Schiphol Airport, the Utrecht Central station and the port of Rotterdam, where asset management, facility management and passenger support services are deployed. Other nation-wide LoRA services are under development in various countries such as the UK, where the Digital Catapult is creating a LoRA network based on the interconnection of 50 LoRaWAN base stations in London with the involvement amongst others of BT. This network has been made available to SMBs (Small Medium Businesses) and start-ups to lower the barriers of IoT-driven innovation in the city.

In the coming few years, we expect to see a proliferation of connected city deployments at the national and international level, based on all connectivity technologies including Wi-Fi, LTE and LPWAN technologies. This will broaden the set of application opportunities, including opportunities for growth and revenue streams for operators, equipment vendors and other stakeholders.

3.7 The role of CCAB and the WBA

For cities that are just beginning to embark on their citywide connectivity deployments, the key challenges are based on understanding how to handle inevitable technology changes and the viable revenue models for public-private partnership. Even for cities that

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ccab-connected-city-blueprint-helps-090000326.html

https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/industries/smart-connected-communities/kinetic-for-cities.html

https://digital.catapult.org.uk/


33


have done some deployments in the past, there is a need to validate technology roadmaps and business models.

The cities must cater to different scenarios – the backup plan for data versus managing security and high definition video streaming for police and transport, requires different capabilities. All these different cases require different levels of connectivity. Therefore, cities need to figure out how all of this ties together. It is also important to recognize that various cities are at different ends of the development spectrum and there are differences in social, economic and political frameworks and this is why the WBA set up the Connected Cities Advisory Board (CCAB).

The CCAB is a unique platform for city managers and CIOs to knowledge-share challenges and opportunities in the development and execution of the Smart City, establish best practices and determine a strategy to leverage public-private partnerships.

The membership of the CCAB consists of a group of city CIOs and senior city and government officials along with industry experts and members of the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA).

The guiding principles of the group are to address and reduce the digital division and ensure digital equality through accessible and universal Internet connectivity, improve the quality of life of residents through hyper-connectivity and establish and grow Smart City’s partnerships to increase shared knowledge and informed decision making.

The Connected City produces a “Blueprint’ intended to work as a guideline to support cities and government authorities develop their connected city plans and for the broader wireless industry, including operators, regulators, equipment manufacturers and service developers to better understand the challenges and opportunities of the Connected City and Smart City ecosystem.

City planning is the main reason for the CCAB and the development of Smart Cities. The framework that CCAB is working on is targeted to become the structure for how the cities develop their smart city plans.

The framework the CCAB is developing will help develop a structure for cities that are developing their smart city plans. Cities are in a very early stage with this type of technology and are still at the very beginning of this conversation on a global level. Many are still at a point where they’re trying to construct what the plan elements should be and then putting a plan together. Some cities are further ahead than others. For example, Singapore and Dubai are two places doing fantastic work in this area.

The CCAB is creating a platform to learn from them and other smart cities/nations to accelerate the smart city planning and implementation process to allow cities to increase the pace and outcomes and cut costs associated with their smart city projects and


34


planning. This is the value of sharing best practices and lesson learned, because our problems are common and similar, even across geographies.

When it comes to planning a “Smart City”, it becomes clear how multidisciplinary a connected community and a smart city can become. Cities are running into the barriers of functional silos and learning how they need to work better together.

Following a decade of vertical application deployments in smart cities, the market is now driven by the need to enable cross-vertical applications, while at the same time interconnecting diverse city ecosystems and citizen engagement..

Connectivity technologies play an instrumental role in establishing smart cities and supporting the connectivity of devices, applications and ultimately of entire ecosystems. In addition to conventional Wi-Fi and LTE connectivity technologies, which used to carry the lion’s share of smart city traffic, we are nowadays witnessing the rise and proliferation of LPWAN technologies for appropriate applications.

The importance of Roaming

Cities are starting to explore the development of wide grids of coverage by combining different networks through roaming services, given to citizens as a single credential that can be used across a variety of networks.

These grids can be managed directly by the city’s authorities or by a third party. For Services Providers (SPs) and cities, there’s an opportunity to harness people’s familiarity and acceptance of Wi-Fi to create new services and products, encouraging additional roaming usage and revenues. A managed Wi-Fi Roaming service can greatly improve the overall user experience. As we saw in the roaming section, the WRIX standard developed by the WBA is an important tool to enable islands of connectivity to become more easily interconnected.

3.8 Case Study: Google India

Bootstrapping Smart City Development with a Wi-Fi Network

Wi-Fi and LPWAN technologies are the foundation for establishing a smart city environment, as they offer connectivity for the city’s people and devices, which is a key prerequisite for all smart city applications. While LPWAN technologies are very promising and will support a large growth in M2M type applications, it’s still Wi-Fi that carries most of the IoT and smart cities traffic worldwide.

Wi-Fi networks are a very good option for the connectivity of not only digital mature cities, but also for cities that are taking their initial steps in the digital area. As a


35


prominent example, Google India has recently developed a large scale high-speed Wi-Fi network for nearly 200 of India’s major railway stations. This project has enabled millions of Indian citizens to gain everyday access to high-speed internet. Beyond connecting many users to the internet, this Wi-Fi network can be seen as a case study about the disruptive and transformational power of a single infrastructure project, particularly in developing countries where the level of personal access remains incredibly low. 3The main characteristics of the project are as follows:

Project Stakeholders: The Wi-Fi network has been established by Google in collaboration with Indian Railways. Furthermore, RailTel4 is involved as a provider of internet services through its fiber network that is available along railway lines. RailTel provides such services to RailWire, which is a retail broadband initiative established by Railtel and the Indian Ministry of Railways.

The rationale behind a railway installation: A railway station is typically a concentration point that brings together thousands of users and their devices. Therefore, the provision of a high-speed infrastructure that enables low-latency connectivity is particularly important. Moreover, the exploitation of broadband and fiber infrastructures established along railway lines is becoming possible and is key to support the backbone capacity in the country.

Applications and Speed: The project enables users to access the internet and browse web sites (including multimedia) with a very good Quality of Service under limited bandwidth conditions. This includes access to social media and multi-media, which is nowadays typical for all internet users. During peak hours, the number of users is exploding and it is more challenging to guarantee high bandwidth and low latency internet access sessions.

Business Incentives and Business Model: Google’s main incentive to engage in this project was to gain more users of course. During the last couple of years, more than 100 million Indian users have been connecting to the internet for the first time, which means that India has become the country with the second highest number of internet users following China. This mass of users generates more traffic, data and demand for Google’s global services. On the other hand, the other partners (such as RailTel) have been considering and implanting viable and revenue generating business models. For example, RailTel offers an ad-enabled login, which enables ad-related business models.

The project is currently focusing on the provision of internet connectivity. However, a number of direct extensions and applications are possible, such as the collection of user

3 https://www.wballiance.com/resource/the-urban-unconnected/ 4 https://www.railtelindia.com/

https://www.wballiance.com/resource/the-urban-unconnected/


36


data in exchange of providing them with internet connectivity, based on a consent-driven process and the offering of infotainment applications during the journeys. In the long run, it will also serve as a basis for the provision of smart city and smart transportation services to passengers. Overall, endless opportunities emerge following the development of a connectivity infrastructure in a smart city environment. This is the reason why private enterprises and public organizations engage in public-private partnerships aimed at providing large-scale infrastructures in a way that distributes costs and diversifies risks. Even after the advent of connectivity technologies such as 4G/5G and LPWAN, this Wi-Fi network will continue to serve the passengers, yielding a significant return on investment in the coming years.

4 Network Evolution & 5G

4.1 Context:

The fifth generation of mobile network standards is expected to be very different from its predecessors in many ways and unlicensed spectrum technologies will play a major role.

There are two main definitions of 5G. One is a narrow one – a set of specifications defined by 3GPP, which will form the basis of official 5G standards. But most stakeholders also believe 5G will be a far broader platform, encompassing multiple radio access technologies (RATs), integrating with wireline connections and supported by new network architectures built on virtualization and software-defined networking (SDN).

As such, it will build on technologies and architectures which have been evolving in the unlicensed spectrum world, especially in Wi-Fi, as much as in cellular. Some of the key enablers of 5G networks have been pioneered in the Wi-Fi community, such as millimeter wave spectrum (WiGig in 60 GHz) and dense virtualized networks (carrier or enterprise Wi-Fi networks built around centralized, software-based controllers).

More broadly, unlicensed and licensed spectrum networks have been evolving in similar directions – towards higher data rates, higher device concentration, software definition and convergence of many spectrum bands and radios. Wi-Fi platforms already include many characteristics which will be associated with 5G, such as high levels of density in targeted areas, aggregation of multiple frequencies, and support for a wide range of power levels from high (for fixed access) to very low (for IoT).

‘True 5G’, then, will go far beyond the core radio standards, and will tap into unlicensed as well as licensed technologies in the following ways:

It will support a wider range of use cases in addition to enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB, which will deliver higher data rates and device density than 4G could do). These will include M2M (machine-to-machine) and IoT (Internet of Things) services,


37


which will drive some of the requirements of the new specifications. This diversity will only be supported by a variety of RATs and unlicensed technologies are already prominent in early M2M/IoT deployments.

It will span licensed and unlicensed spectrum, aggregating both types together, and will also harness emerging models for spectrum sharing. This will be supported by the 5G New Radio (NR) standards in unlicensed mode, but most players also believe 5G, in its wider sense, will integrate multiple air interfaces including the IEEE standards and some low power wide area networks (LPWANs).

It will be implemented in a far wider variety of bands than 3G or 4G (though it is also likely to reuse those bands). The new spectrum options will include high frequency millimeter wave bands such as 26 GHz, 28 GHz, 39 GHz and 60 GHz (see Chapter 5)

It will be regarded by most deployers as a whole new architecture which goes well beyond the radio and packet core. Network functions virtualization (NFV) and SDN are starting to be implemented by some operators in 4G and Wi-Fi, but will be essential enablers of 5G, and the basis of some disruptive 5G technologies such as network slicing, which will enable virtual ‘slices’ of capacity to be assigned and optimized for specific users on-demand. It will make it simpler to converge many RATs in a single virtualized network and assign tasks to the most suitable spectrum or radio, on-demand

There will be a long period of coexistence and integration between 5G NR, LTE and Wi-Fi and other unlicensed spectrum technologies.

Fiber will also play a significant role in 5G networks because of their expected density. As well as providing backhaul for cell towers, fiber will need to reach each cluster of small cells or Wi-Fi access points (several sharing a fiber link), or sometimes an individual small cell. For operators investing in fiber-to-the-home for broadband access services, there may be the opportunity to use the same infrastructure for small cell and Wi-Fi backhaul.

All these core characteristics of 5G networks are already a feature of Wi-Fi and unlicensed spectrum technologies, or are prominent in the roadmap.


38


4.2 Standardization and the 5G roadmap

4.2.1 5G requirements

The fundamental network requirements for a new generation of standards are defined by the ITU (International Telecommunications Union) (see Appendix for details of those requirements). Any technology which aims to be accepted as a global standard under the ITU’s IMT-2000 (5G) program must deliver the following requirements, or have a clear roadmap to do so:

• Higher data rates, 1Gbps and beyond to support high quality video (e.g. 4K or 8K) and data-intensive cloud services.

• Lower latency (the delay between a signal or data packet being transmitted, and received at the other end). Some IoT and augmented reality services require this delay to be as short as possible, and a few even require latency below 1ms. For example, this is the case in the communication between an autonomous vehicle and roadside controllers.

• High reliability and security for mission critical applications like factory or transport control.

• Higher device density – more human or IoT devices – will require connectivity within a given location, with extreme examples including stadiums or airports, which may need to support up to 1,000 handsets plus large numbers of M2M sensors per square kilometer.

The Wi-Fi roadmap is fully focused on these requirements, and on meeting them via interworking with other technologies where appropriate. In February 2017, CTOs met to discuss the ITU’s 5G programs and make recommendations, which go far beyond the radio, and put forward a top-to-bottom architecture change, together with a redesign of wireless network protocols which would combine cellular and Wi-Fi. They also recommended new technology at DSP (digital signal processor) level to boost performance and new ways to measure and improve quality of service.

The first 3GPP 5G standards are expected to be finalized in March 2018, in the first phase of Release 15, and to be deployable in 2019. This will be the 5G NR Non-Standalone specification, which has been separated from the rest of Release 15 and fast-tracked, to give operators such as AT&T the chance to make early, standards-based deployments. Non-Standalone 5G requires an LTE core and anchor network. The Standalone specifications, which support a greenfield 5G NR network, with no LTE anchor, will follow about six months later, as figure 1 shows.


39


The decision to fast-track one strand of the 5G standards means that operators will be able, if they wish, to deploy standardized 5G at an earlier stage than previously expected. A few mobile network operators (MNOs), mainly in the USA, Japan and South Korea, aim to commence commercial deployment of 5G using pre-standard equipment. Most of these early roll-outs will be for fixed wireless access (FWA), for instance by Verizon in 28 GHz and 39 GHz spectrum; or to support dense networks for large sporting events such as the Olympic Games in Seoul and Tokyo in 2018 and 2020 (probably using 800 MHz in the 28 GHz band in South Korea’s case)

Most operators, however, will be more cautious, waiting until standards are completed, an ecosystem is starting to build, and until they have identified business opportunities. Even among the early adopters, the priority will be to build on existing deployments in 4G and Wi-Fi and to continue to develop and enhance those networks, supporting coexistence with new technologies including 5G NR and next generation Wi-Fi standards.

In the survey of 86 Tier 1 and 2 MNOs (36 in Europe) conducted by Rethink Technology Research5 in the second quarter of 2017, respondents were asked to estimate their likely date to start commercial deployment of 5G New Radio. Only 3% expected to do this before 2020, while 45% expected to start deployment in 2021-2023, and 42% in 2024-2026.

Most will not deploy 5G at scale until at least two of three critical criteria are fulfilled:

• A rich ecosystem of devices at multiple price points

• Measurable operating and spectral efficiencies which will reduce the cost per GB of delivering rising quantities of mobile data

• Identifiable revenues which would only be achievable with the new network.

Among the respondents, 56% said they would need to fulfil two of these criteria before deploying at scale, and 27% wanted to fulfil all three.

The broad open ecosystem of devices, equipment and software which exists around Wi-Fi will help to reach those critical requirements more quickly than using cellular alone. This is a key difference which we expect to see in the 5G ecosystem, since it will embrace the technologies and working practices of unlicensed platforms, as well as the open source initiatives.

5 Rethink Technology Research, ‘RAN Deployments and Forecasts 2016-2022’ December 2016 www.rethinkresearch.biz

http://www.rethinkresearch.biz/


40


In some cases, unlicensed spectrum technologies such as Wi-Fi, WiGig or LPWANs may tick these boxes before ‘official 5G’ standards do. This means that some operators will move towards 5G-type capabilities and use cases – such as very low power M2M networks – with current technologies, and migrate to 5G when the technology is mature and the business case is right.

4.3 The role of Wi-Fi and unlicensed spectrum technologies in 5G

This increasingly variegated platform drives the requirement for coexistence between 5G NR, LTE and unlicensed technologies – close integration at core and even radio level now, and a harmonized migration path both to 5G and future IEEE 802 standards. The two tracks may not converge entirely but operators are clear that they want the closest possible coexistence so they can mix and match current and future 3GPP and IEEE technologies as their business case requires.

Most work on 5G radio standards is driven by 3GPP, and in the past the IEEE and the Wi-Fi community have been on largely separate, and even competing, paths. However, most stakeholders would welcome convergence between the two, through common interconnectivity frameworks and APIs, if not an actual unified physical layer.

According to the WBA Annual Survey, 43% of respondents believe that convergence is either crucial or very important to their current network strategy, while 33% say it is important. And looking ahead, 55% say convergence will be crucial or very important, and 29% that it will be important in future network strategies.

This is because a key objective for wireless operators is to increase the flexibility of their networks so they can harness a wide variety of spectrum and equipment resources, to support demanding usage patterns as affordably as possible. Unlicensed spectrum will be an important element of that effort to reduce the cost of wireless capacity. As more unlicensed spectrum is opened up around the world, including in mmWave bands, there will also be a growing number of technologies and use cases which rely on it.

4.3.1 Wi-Fi evolves 5G-type capabilities

While 5G will support unlicensed and shared spectrum, Wi-Fi has been moving in the other direction, taking on many characteristics of cellular technologies such as enhanced quality of service, security and other features. As the lines between licensed and unlicensed spectrum blur, Wi-Fi will evolve alongside cellular and be part of the broader 5G platform, bringing 5G-like capabilities to non-spectrum owners such as cable operators, city authorities or private network providers.


41


A good example is its rising support for densification, a key goal of the cellular community. This will also be supported by the next iteration of the IEEE 802.11 standards on which Wi-Fi is based (802.11ax is particularly targeted at delivering gigabit data rates in dense environments).

As in cellular, where current advances in LTE are laying the groundwork for 5G in areas like density and power efficiency, so current developments in unlicensed spectrum technologies are pointing the way to 5G-like capabilities, especially in 802.11/Wi-Fi. The fastest commercial Wi-Fi standard, 802.11ac Wave 2, supports multi-gigabit data rates, while 802.11ad (WiGig) is blazing the trail for mainstream wireless broadband technologies in mmWave bands (60 GHz).

The first pre-standard 802.11ax chipsets have appeared from Qualcomm, Quantenna and Broadcom, enabling equipment makers and users to sample this technology before its full specifications – seen as the first ‘5G’ 802.11 release – are finalized in 2018.

In addition, the draft standard, 802.11ay, is targeted to be completed by the end of 2017 and will support higher throughput and lower latency for 60 GHz.

Figure 2. Comparison between 5G and 802.11ax requirements indicating close alignment of roadmaps. Source: Samsung6

6 https://www.ngmn.org/uploads/media/NGMN_5G_White_Paper_V1_0.pdf


42


Other emerging features are geared to high quality enterprise and indoor markets and dense outdoor hotzones, just like cellular 5G. For instance, the Wi-Fi Alliance recently introduced a certification program called Wi-Fi Vantage, which includes 802.11ac, Passpoint and two new technologies, Agile Multiband and, later in the year, Optimized Connectivity.

Agile Multiband helps ensure that a user has the best available signal by identifying the best AP, band and channel and steering the device to that connection. Agile Multiband also re-authenticates devices with WPA2 security sufficiently quickly for a user to continue a VoIP conversation while moving between APs without dropping the call.

Optimized Connectivity speeds up the discovery of available APs and simplifies initial authentication and IP layer connectivity. It also reduces management traffic between a device and an AP.By making it simpler for users to receive a strong signal and to move around within a large, dense urban or enterprise network, these technologies help create a cellular-like experience and can support managed and neutral host platforms.

The WBA has identified areas where 802.11 technologies outperform the base requirements for IMT-2020 (5G), and ones where future work will be needed to bring Wi-Fi into line with 5G cellular. Wi-Fi can outperform the IMT-2020 requirements related to area traffic capacity and latency, but whereas network efficiency values are above those associated with IMT-Advanced (4G), and they do not meet the target requirements for IMT-2020. A key priority is to enhance 802.11 standards for vehicular use cases at higher speeds than supported by the current 802.11p.

This is summarized in Figure 3. With each technology having its own strengths and weaknesses, it is important that operators can use a combination of 802.11 and 3GPP (and other) connections to achieve the best overall performance.


43


Figure 3. Enhanced 802.11 capabilities compared with those of IMT-2020 and IMT-Advanced. Source: WBA7

4.3.2 Lines blur between cellular and Wi-Fi

Such developments show how the Wi-Fi platform is evolving, often in parallel with cellular, and sometimes taking the lead in key technology areas like mmWave spectrum. In a new white paper, the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) says that Wi-Fi will be a key component in three critical 5G use cases – smart cities, IoT sensor networks and safety/surveillance.

The WBA’s CEO Shrikant Shenwai said, when launching the Alliance’s recent white paper on 5G use cases, said: “While plans to roll out 5G networks are well on their way, the industry still needs to agree upon the standards for the technology before 2020. The WBA has put together this report to highlight the significant impact that Wi-Fi is having on the definition of 5G.”

He added that the WBA was studying what “we as an organization can do to bridge the gap between licensed and unlicensed technologies within this timeframe [to 2020]. The WBA will continue to develop its 5G strategy to work towards ensuring WBA and Wi-Fi networks are ready and enabled to meet the needs of a 5G-based world.”

7 https://www.wballiance.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/5G-Networks-Role-of-Wi-Fi-and-Unlicensed-Technologies-V2.pdf


44


The IEEE, the standards body for the 802.11 specs which underpin Wi-Fi, has its own 5G Initiative, which falls within its Standards Association (IEEE-SA). This, in turn, is part of the Global Standards Collaboration (GSC), which also includes the ITU plus bodies like ETSI. The IEEE has the advantage of standards activities in many areas of the value chain, in contrast with 3GPP’s narrower focus on the radio and systems architecture/core. The Initiative’s co-chair, Ashutosh Dutta, said: “IEEE 5G is able to build upon IEEE work in several key emerging technology initiatives such as IoT, Smart Cities, Smart Materials, and Brain and Digital Senses. Accessing the technical breadth and depth of IEEE, we will help unlock the potential of the broader 5G ecosystem.”

In the age of blurring lines between licensed, shared and unlicensed spectrum – and the overall race for airwaves – 802.11 may be able to access IMT-2020 identified frequency bands, including exclusive as well as shared spectrum access. Cisco’s Andrew Myles, manager of wireless and security standards, has suggested that the IEEE might take advantage of a 3GPP technology, LTE-LWA (LTE-WLAN Aggregation), part of 3GPP Release 13. This supports aggregation between LTE and Wi-Fi at or just above the PDCP (packet data convergence protocol) layer and so could help 802.11 address any ITU requirements for ‘macro-type’ operations, since these could be satisfied by the cellular partner network (some countries may insist on IMT-2000 compliance for certain use cases).

4.3.3 Other unlicensed spectrum technologies

It is not just Wi-Fi which is broadening the wireless access platform and laying foundations for 5G. Other technologies which enjoy significant usage in unlicensed bands include:

• LPWANs, usually in the sub-1 GHz ISM bands (900 MHz/868 MHz). These include LoRa, Sigfox). See Chapter 3 and Addendum for in-depth analysis of LPWANs and their role in smart cities.

• Wireless personal area networks (WPANs) such as Bluetooth, ZigBee, 6LoWPAN, Thread and zWave. These are important to support short range communications between devices, but can also be meshed to cover a whole room, home or enterprise. They have pioneered capabilities like direct D2D (device-to-device) communications, dense mesh and ad. hoc discovery, which will be important in 5G. Their importance is greatly increased by the emergence of the IoT

All these can be used in conjunction with cellular in a multi-RAT environment; to extend a wireline model; or standalone as alternatives to cellular.


45


Figure 4 highlights the wide range of wireless connectivity options which exist now, many of which have evolution paths into the next generation. The priority for operators is to adopt flexible platforms with unified air interfaces and inter-connectivity, so they can mix and match the most appropriate connection technologies for their use cases.

Figure 4. Wireless connectivity technologies targeting the Internet of Things. Source: Keysight Technologies8

4.4 5G use cases

As noted above, 5G will target a far wider variety of use cases than previous wireless platforms. This is why it needs to incorporate a greater diversity of technologies in the radio and core networks.

In the Wi-Fi world, this will be the continuation of a process which has been ongoing for years. Wi-Fi usage has evolved to embrace use cases which go well beyond simply connectivity and include home video networks, high quality enterprise services, smart city networks and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications.

8 https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/understanding-the-iot-cloud-and-how-it-will-change-things-2015-10/


46


The technology has taken on many new features to support the new usage, and Wi-Fi has become applicable to a widening range of service providers, including specialists in vertical industries or cities, or neutral host platforms. This evolution of technology, use case, and operator types, will continue in the 5G era and will often develop in parallel with other unlicensed spectrum technologies, and with cellular. For instance, current work is looking to apply 802.11 to rail and vehicular environments which require fast hand-off.

4.4.1 5G use case categories

The three categories of use cases defined by the operator-driven alliance, the NGMN (Next Generation Mobile Network), for 5G are:

• Enhanced or extreme mobile broadband (eMBB) to expand and improve current consumer and enterprise services, and support new user experiences such as those enabled by augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR).

• Massive machine-type communications (mMTC) to support machine-to-machine (M2M) services with very large numbers of end points, typically operating at very low power levels.

• Ultra-reliable machine-type communications (uMTC) to support unprecedented levels of reliability, availability and quality of service, typically with very low latency, to support services such as critical communications and connected or autonomous vehicles.

All of these are areas of focus for the unlicensed spectrum community, and for operators seeking the optimal combination of technologies to support these capabilities. For instance, Wi-Fi has led the way on very high data rates and affordability, while cellular spectrum and technology has been evolving rapidly in terms of ultra-low latency and high availability. A combination of the two would often be ideal to achieve a use case which required both high bandwidth and low latency (an in-car system delivering passenger video while supporting critical safety connectivity, for instance). Mixing and matching different spectrum and RATs to support a complex use case at optimal cost and performance is the heart of 5G and the reason why it requires full integration of unlicensed technologies.


47


Figure 5. 5GPP use case categories Source: 5GPPP METIS

There are many individual use cases within these three categories. In many instances, the business models have not yet been fully worked out and most operators are still at the stage of evaluating the attractiveness of each case, especially in the mMTC and uMTC areas.


48


Source: Rethink

Table 1 - Selection of use cases for next generation mobile networks.


49


4.4.2 Initial use cases – Mobile Broadband (MBB) and Fixed Wireless Access (FWA)

According to the operator survey, most operators will focus initially on their core use case, wireless broadband for consumer and enterprise Internet, apps and video. Then they will layer other services on the network to derive additional revenues on the same infrastructure.

Fixed wireless access (FWA) is the initial 5G use case for some operators, especially in the USA. Operators like Verizon and AT&T see this as a way to deploy 5G, and understand how it behaves, before mobile devices are readily available; and it can fill gaps in their fiber network or extend fixed broadband to new markets. There is also a Wi-Fi-based push into FWA, for underserved users but also to replace ageing DSL copper links.

In some markets, Wi-Fi is starting to replace DSL as a last mile solution for some operators, often using emerging mesh solutions running in 60 GHz. Such a solution would look similar to the designs which are being envisaged for fixed and whole-home wireless using 5G New Radio in mmWave bands – but some operators may see Wi-Fi/WiGig as a nearer term solution than waiting for 5G, or a cheaper option than early deployment of NR.

In a new white paper, the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) says that Wi-Fi will be a key component in three critical 5G use cases – smart cities, IoT sensor networks and safety/surveillance.9

4.4.3 Future use case priorities in 5G

Most wireless operators, then, believe 5G will be initially focused on enhancing the business case for existing services, with new services starting to be introduced between one and three years later. The more demanding the levels of latency and reliability, the longer the expected timescale to deploy.

However, many operators believe the ability to deploy these new, demanding services eventually is the chief justification for investing in 5G. And 5G operators will not just be the current MNOs. Many other providers will be able to use unlicensed and shared spectrum to steal a march in some of the key target use cases such as smart cities, smart energy or healthcare. These may be private network operators, cable operators, neutral host providers and others, using Wi-Fi, LoRAa, Sigfox and other technologies, and migrating to future 802.11 releases as well as 5G-Unlicensed.

9 https://www.wballiance.com/resource/5g-networks-the-role-of-wi-fi-and-unlicensed-technologies/

https://www.wballiance.com/resource/5g-networks-the-role-of-wi-fi-and-unlicensed-technologies/


50


Whether an established MNO or new wireless entrant, the operators are starting to assess their 5G use case priorities, looking beyond mobile broadband and fixed wireless.

Figure 6 shows the results of a survey of 72 mobile and wireless operators (licensed and unlicensed) about their key 5G business cases. They were asked to name all the use cases which they believed would impact their commercial performance by 2025. They were then asked to rank the seven use cases which were most commonly cited. The results show that priorities vary between different regions though enhancing MBB is a top three concern for over half of operators in all regions. Connected vehicles, smart cities and Industrial IoT are the next-ranked services globally. All these can be targeted with licensed or unlicensed spectrum, or a combination.

Figure 6. Key use case priorities for 5G. Percentage of MNOs placing each use case in their top three for commercial impact.

Source: Rethink Technology Research MNO survey (72 respondents, Q217)

This echoes the results of the WBA Annual Survey, addressing which applications and services were expected to drive future network and traffic growth. Almost 70% were focused on new IoT and vertical industry services, placing these in their top three priorities, while 60% chose streaming video, one of the critical applications of MBB.

55

48

4341 40

37 36

66

50

37

3235

3842

5451

45

36

42

24

48

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

Enhance MBB Connectedvehicles

Smart cities Industrial IoT VR/AR espgaming

Fixedwireless

Healthcare

% p

laci

ng in

top

3

Global Europe APAC


51


4.5 SDN/ NFV, orchestration and service convergence

It is clear that a new set of radio standards will not be enough, on its own, to support all of the new and enhanced capabilities required by the emerging mobile services, whilst at the same time providing dramatically lower costs than before.

For many operators, 5G will go hand-in-hand with virtualization of the network, and the introduction of SDN controllers to achieve full resource flexibility, plus orchestrators to tie all the elements together as a holistic entity.

Operators are therefore planning to migrate to whole new architectures to improve resource efficiency, performance and service agility.


52


4.5.1 Key network architecture trends

Key trends include:

• densification;

• virtualization; and

• edge computing and mobile cloud.

Densification is the practice of adding capacity and coverage in a targeted way by adding Wi-Fi or cellular small cells to the network. The cells can be mounted on street furniture, or deployed indoors, attached to an enterprise Ethernet connection. As attention moves from coverage to capacity, operators talk more commonly about heterogeneous networks (HetNets) which integrate any combination of cell sizes, base station configurations and spectrum bands, including Wi-Fi and LPWANs such as LoRa.

Virtualization:

This is a way for operator to use their spectrum and capacity resources more efficiently and flexibly, as well as to reduce capex and opex costs. For these reasons, they are turning to architectures which decouple the actual functions of the network from the hardware. Instead of deploying dedicated appliances to support functions, such as radio access or security gateways, they are implementing some or all network functions in software as virtual machines (VMs), which can run on off-the-shelf hardware, in local premises or switching centers, or in the cloud. The system creates tunnels between the VMs so they can be reconfigured on the fly without affecting the whole system. This has already been implemented in some enterprise and carrier Wi-Fi systems.

SDN-driven orchestration

In addition, many operators are moving to software-defined networks (SDN). These are programmable and highly flexible. They separate the control and data planes, centralizing the control and orchestration of the huge number of VMs, and allocating resources like storage and bandwidth dynamically wherever they are required. The network is fully programmable, using standard interfaces, common developer tools and programmable APIs for adapting core network behavior in near-real time. All this enables new services to be launched and expanded (or dialed down) very quickly, according to usage patterns, avoiding the need for over-provisioning. It also makes it possible to integrate multiple networks on a fully flexible basis, allocating tasks to different connections as required, and treating all the networks as a common pool of capacity. In a dense 5G network with hundreds of Wi-Fi and cellular access points, orchestration and automation, from a standardize controller, will be key enablers.


53


The first deployments of NFV/SDN access networks are often seen in enterprise environments, where clusters of Wi-Fi or cellular access points are controlled centrally by a controller with a virtualized baseband, often combined with a packet core, on premise or in the cloud.

Major SDN/NFV proponents like AT&T, Telefonica and Verizon believe the maximum impact will be made if, eventually, SDN is applied to every layer of the network, enabling fixed and wireless access of all kinds, last mile backhaul, optical transport and data center platforms to be managed as one end-to-end system.

This can lead to implementing important 5G concepts like network slicing, in which an individual service or user can call up a virtual ‘slice’ of capacity, optimized for its particular requirements (e.g. low latency or high data rate). This slice can rely on several air interfaces and spectrum bands.

Figure 7. A software-defined, virtualized network with multiple RATs. Source: University of Trento10

10https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279246240_Software_defined_and_virtualized_wireless_access_in_future_wireless_networks_Scenarios_and_standards


54


Edge computing:

One of the most important enablers of new digital services is the convergence of communications, storage and computer power to support mobile and distributed cloud platforms. Computing and storage resources are increasingly integrated with mobile connectivity, either directly at the base station, or through high speed links. That turns the network into an IT platform on which developers can create a wide range of applications, just as they do for servers.

Moving processing and intelligence to the network edge – as close to the user as possible – reduces latency by processing a great deal of data locally, rather than transferring it all to the cloud. It also improves performance for QoS-sensitive services, from connected cars to mobile video, by reducing the round-trip for data and signaling.

Any architecture which distributes the IT platform to the network edge will inherently rely on small cells, Wi-Fi access points and local gateways. Edge computing is already very important in key WBA initiatives, particularly smart cities and smart venues, since it provides support for large numbers of users in close proximity, and enables personalized and location aware services to be delivered. In the 5G era, there will be more standardized ways to support connectivity and intelligence at the edge, such as ETSI’s MEC (formerly Mobile, now Multi-Access Edge Computing), and the OpenFog consortium.


55


Figure 8. MEC in a smart city environment with mixed access networks11

4.5.2 Cooperation between standards efforts:

The 3GPP’s and IEEE’s work is addressing some of the key enablers for the new network architecture, and certainly the 5G New Radio work takes account of emerging trends like network slicing. But increasingly there also has to be cooperation with other standards bodies in the IT/cloud and Internet areas, such as the IETF, Broadband Forum, ETSI and IEEE activities outside 802.11, as well as many national and academic 5G R&D programs.

For instance, Alissa Cooper, chair of the IETF and a Cisco Fellow, recently identified several work items within the IETF which could be relevant to 5G, both in use cases and technologies. These included evolutions of existing technologies such as EAP (Extensible Authentication Protocol), which support network access authentication and is used in Wi-Fi standards, among others; and HTTP/2, an update to the HTTP standard

11 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/303014923_fig1_Figure-1-Smart-city-data-management-infrastructure-using-mobile-edge-computing


56


which could help reduce latency and make more efficient use of network resources, in 5G and IoT applications.

In addition, a high degree of innovation is coming from the open source community. Open source solutions are seen in software, particularly in the new platforms to support SDN and orchestration, such as ONAP and OpenStack. They are also emerging in hardware, especially via the Facebook-led Telecom Infra Project (TIP), which aims to drive the development and uptake of commoditized, very low cost base stations, switches and other telecoms equipment. Some of the designs have come from Facebook itself, such as the Terragraph 60 GHz small cell, based on WiGig technology, and the Aries antenna array.

Others are being contributed by start-ups, often backed by MNOs which are keen to encourage a new cost base for their next generation networks. Examples include Deutsche Telekom, Orange and Zain Bahrain.

4.6 Case study: Liberty Global

Wi-Fi helps Liberty Global to deliver ‘digital oxygen’ to its customers

Liberty Global is the world's largest international TV and broadband group with operations in Europe, the USA and Latin America. It is a quad play provider, delivering fixed and mobile broadband, telephony and video/TV services to a total of 85.4 million subscribers across its footprint. It has been a major investor in Wi-Fi to complement its wireline and cellular networks and has over 10 million Wi-Fi access points.

For public access, it has a combination of its own and partners’ public hotspots, and has been converting a large percentage of its home router base into ‘homespots’ (with a second SSID open for access to visitors or passers-by). This Wi-Fi network is a great deal more than a useful extra for cable subscribers – it is part of the “digital oxygen” which Gavin Sheldon, Global VP for Connectivity, says Liberty must provide for its customers.

“Delivering high quality access to the Internet, via a variety of technologies, is what drives us,” he said.

That is a moving target. As customers’ expectations of the quality of their online experience rise, Liberty is continually evolving its Wi-Fi networks to support the capabilities which are critical to users – easy, seamless and secure connectivity, whatever connection they are on.

For instance, Sheldon points out that it used to be sufficient to install one good access point in a home or office, but now customers want excellent coverage throughout the premises, and no broken sessions as they move around, which may entail multiple APs, or improved technology to extend range and support handover.


57


The mantra is ‘always best connected’, and that is driving an important evolution to place more control in the hands both of the customers and the operator. The new Connect application allows users to view and change the type of connection they are on, while Liberty’s back end systems are continually enhanced to improve visibility of data traffic and allow the company to optimize their networks to deliver the best quality of experience.

‘Always best connected’ is a key competitive differentiator for Liberty – even more than content, which is available from other providers and the Internet. The “arms race” in peak data rates, in cable or wireless, is not the only issue now, says Sheldon – it is more important that Wi-Fi users get a cellular-like seamless, secure, automatic experience. When they receive that, they are more loyal, more satisfied and tend to spend more, so the impact on the business is significant.

To continue to build this differentiation will involve embracing new Wi-Fi technologies as they emerge, from new standards such as 802.11ax to expanded use of Passpoint authentication. There are challenges in the Wi-Fi environment, says Sheldon, because it is an unregulated medium and devices do not always support standards in a consistent way. This is why industry associations like the WBA are important, to introduce consistent testing and certification and drive raw standards into the business case.

5 Spectrum and Regulatory Policies for Unlicensed Spectrum and for 5G

5.1 Introduction:

An important trend in the 4G era has been the blurring of the lines between licensed and unlicensed spectrum and technology. This has been driven by the rising need for more spectrum capacity, especially in contiguous bands, to support high levels of data traffic and high bandwidth applications. That has encouraged operators and regulators to find ways to aggregate and integrate nearby airwaves, whether or not they have traditionally been regulated in the same way.

This process will be intensified in 5G, and there will be a far wider range of mechanisms to access spectrum, including sharing, dynamic access and marketplace-based trading. There will also be additional spectrum bands opened for wireless broadband technologies, including high frequency airwaves above 10 GHz.

All this will create challenges for regulators, to devise an optimal framework which drives global harmonization in these new bands – essential to build a broad device ecosystem and support roaming – but also supports a new level of flexibility.

Overall, there is a looming spectrum shortage for Wi-Fi, as 2.4 GHz and even 5 GHz become congested, and for other technologies – even before 5G is a reality. This will be


58


addressed partly by new allocations of spectrum, but even more important will be emerging ways to aggregate spectrum more effectively and to use existing airwaves with far greater efficiency.

5.2 Current spectrum and regulatory situation:

At the global and regional level, spectrum assignments are governed by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and decisions are made every four years at the World Radio Conference (WRC). This assigns primary and sometimes secondary usage (e.g. satellite may be the primary allocation, with mobile broadband as a secondary user in a sharing situation).

National and regional regulators then make decisions about how to allocate the agreed bands to operators and the rules that will apply, within the global framework. Those rules include access mechanism (long license, short license, light license, unlicensed etc); power levels; mandates to avoid interference with other users in the band. Increasingly, regulators are technology neutral and use case neutral – operators can deploy any authorized technology, and support any applications. For instance, some bands which used to be for fixed wireless access only are now being made neutral (fixed or mobile), especially in the 2.5 GHz and 3.5 GHz ranges. Additionally, national regulators may assign non-global bands for specific local purposes such as public safety networks.

Most administrations still have a regulatory framework that is built around a clear split between licensed and unlicensed technology, with different technologies in each.

Figure 9. Traditional regulatory situation with a clear divided between licensed and unlicensed


59


But they are starting to work on frameworks which will accommodate many ways to access spectrum, such as dynamic sharing. Examples include the US FCC’s CBRS (Citizens’ Broadband Radio Service) scheme, with three tiers of access (see below). In addition, regulators will take account of the blurring of technology lines between different types of spectrum.

Figure 10 represents the emerging situation for spectrum allocation, and shows that there is no longer a clean break between licensed and unlicensed technologies and this will affect regulatory policies in future, especially when 5G-Unlicensed is defined (in 3GPP Release 16). Operators can choose the combination of technologies in unlicensed bands which best suits their business case.

Figure 10. Licensed, unlicensed and shared spectrum schemes will work together in future. Source: FCC

5.3 Additional allocation of unlicensed and shared spectrum

There is a rising demand round the world for more unlicensed spectrum. This comes from

cellular operators that want to increase their capacity at affordable cost

fixed line ISPs or broadcasters which want to add wireless services to their bundles but lack spectrum

companies supporting enterprise and private network users, which want to go wireless-first

Wi-Fi ISPs which need to support rising levels of data traffic and new services.


60


However, there remains an imbalance, in the view of many stakeholders, between licensed and unlicensed spectrum availability. Some of this stems from the fact that, until Wi-Fi became a globally adopted wireless broadband technology, most unlicensed spectrum radios were used for short range purposes, often at low power, so their spectrum requirements were limited. The evolution of Wi-Fi to become a full wireless broadband technology reaching beyond its WLAN roots, the emergence of LPWANs, and the development of unlicensed cellular options, all increase the need for unlicensed capacity.

The current globally harmonized unlicensed bands (above 30 MHz) are few:

40.66-40.7 MHz

2400 - 2484.5 MHz (extended to 2500 MHz in some countries)

5725 - 5875 MHz

24 – 24.25 GHz

61 – 61.5 GHz

122 – 123 GHz

244 246 GHz

In addition, there are some unlicensed or lightly licensed bands which are available in individual regions. One example is the US, where the V Band (7-64 GHz and 64-71 GHz) is unlicensed, and the E Band (71-76 GHz and 81-86 GHz) is lightly licensed. Availability and regulation of these bands varies in different parts of the world.

Figure 11 highlights the relatively small amount of unlicensed spectrum in a European example:

Figure 11. Proportion of unlicensed spectrum, below and above 6 GHz. Source: Plum Consulting12

12 http://www.plumconsulting.co.uk/pdfs/Plum_July_2015_Future_use_of_Licence_Exempt_Radio_Spectrum.pdf


61


The main source of additional unlicensed capacity will come from higher frequency bands (see below), but below 6 GHz, new frequencies will more commonly come from mechanisms to share with non-wireless broadband incumbents.

However, the focus on millimeter wave and shared spectrum should not distract from the fact that there are still new opportunities in the 5 GHz band itself.

5.3.1 The 5 GHz band:

As the 2.4 GHz band becomes congested, 5 GHz is becoming the primary band for expanding Wi-Fi’s capacity and range of services. There are two major strands of development in 5 GHz:

• Availability of an increased amount of 5 GHz spectrum for wireless broadband

• Coexistence of Wi-Fi with other technologies in the band (with cellular, but also satellite, radar and vehicle-to-vehicle services)

In terms of increasing availability and usability, there are several developments.

At the low end of the band, 5150-5350 MHz, regulators in countries such as Canada and the UK are looking to relax indoor-only and transmit power restrictions to allow broader Wi-Fi applications. If Wi-Fi gained access to the channels between 64 and 100, there could be greater use of wide 40 MHz and 80 MHz channels.

The middle section of the band, 5350-5470 MHz, is closed to Wi-Fi in many countries, despite lobbying by the community, and is used by earth observation satellites, government radars and drones. However, the USA has taken a lead in expanding the amount of 5 GHz spectrum available for wireless broadband, including in the 5.35-5.47 GHz area (and 5.85-5.925 GHz and 5.15-5.25 GHz).

From 5470-5725 MHz, Wi-Fi is allowed in most countries as long as it supports anti-interference and spectrum sharing techniques - Dynamic Frequency Selection (DFS) and Transmit Power Control (TPC). This is to allow for coexistence with other users such as radar.

The high end of the band, from 5725-5850 MHz, is now open in the US, and some other regulators look set to follow suit, such as the UK’s Ofcom. The incumbents are fixed satellite services in many markets.

At the top of the band, in 5850-5925 MHz, there are opportunities for more Wi-Fi usage, if it can share with ADAS, vehicle-to-vehicle and other road communications – in the US and Europe, this spectrum is reserved for those services, particularly for the Dedicated Short-Range Communications (DSRC) technology, an 802.11 standard.


62


In July 2017, FCC chairman Ajit Pai asked whether unlicensed spectrum usage could be extended even more, within the 5.925-6.425 GHz area. With 802.11ax contiguous spectrum availability is important so adding 6 GHz as a contiguous unlicensed band to 5 GHz would support high levels of capacity.

Despite these improvements in the 5 GHz band, it will become congested over time if data traffic continues to rise at the current rate. The Wi-Fi Alliance believes13 between 500 MHz and 1 GHz of additional spectrum will be needed for unlicensed technologies by 2020, and possibly 1.3 GHz to 1.8 GHz by 2025. The 60 GHz band is already available for 802.11ad or WiGig, which is also certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance.

5.3.2 Coexistence in the 5 GHz band

To add to the potential pressure on the 5 GHz band, cellular technologies are now moving into it alongside Wi-Fi and incumbents.

Though most regulators do not pronounce on individual technologies, they do get involved if there is risk of interference with existing services. This explains why the FCC has taken an active interest in the debate between the Wi-Fi and the 3GPP communities over LTE-Unlicensed (LTE-U).

This is the first cellular standard to operate in unlicensed spectrum, specifically 5 GHz. LTE-U has been particularly controversial because it does not have to support Listen Before Talk (LBT), the standard method for technologies in 5 GHz to avoid interfering with one another’s signals (supported by Wi-Fi and mandated by many regulators, for instance in Europe). In markets where LBT is not mandated, some operators were planning to deploy LTE-U, but this has caused a high level of concern among Wi-Fi operators.

However, in most cases LTE-U is being superseded by LTE-LAA (Licensed Assisted Access), which does support LBT and runs in the 5 GHz band, provided it is anchored to a host network in licensed spectrum. Some operators, such as Verizon Wireless in the US, are embarking on commercial deployments of LTE-LAA. This is expected to become the preferred option, rather than LTE-U, because it can be used globally, and is less controversial as it supports LBT.

It is important that an approach is agreed which satisfies all sides, because the future will see more technologies coexisting in unlicensed or shared bands.

13 https://www.wi-fi.org/news-events/newsroom/additional-unlicensed-spectrum-needed-to-deliver-future-wi-fi-connectivity


63


An emerging technology, MulteFire, will allow LTE to run in unlicensed and shared bands without a licensed host, while LTE-LWA is another standard which can aggregate cellular and Wi-Fi signals in the same band. Conversely, some private network operators run variants of 802.11 or LPWAN technologies in licensed bands.

Figure 12 summarizes the main ways that Wi-Fi and LTE can coexist in 5 GHz.

Figure 12. Source: Oi Brazil14

5G is widely regarded as a common framework which will integrate multiple air interfaces and spectrum bands, which will be dynamically used to create the best cost: performance ratio for a particular service.

5.4 Coordinated shared spectrum models

Advocates for more dynamic and flexible approaches to spectrum licensing argue that the issues of primary allocations and rigid timescales, which are a feature of the current cellular regime, will become less relevant over time. The Dynamic Spectrum Alliance, for instance, campaigns for regulators and technologists to accelerate work to devise

14 https://www.slideshare.net/AlbertoBoaventura/scws-latam-2016-integrating-small-cells-wifi-coexistence-in-unlicensed-spectrum


64


mechanisms to support spectrum sharing in bands where the existing operators under use the band. Examples are sharing between broadcast and mobile services, especially in the TV white space (TVWS) spectrum; between wireless and satellite services; and between wireless providers and government users, as in the US CBRS scheme.

These sharing techniques can make more frequencies accessible to wireless broadband by freeing up underused airwaves. In the past, it has not been practical for wireless services to share the same spectrum as other users such as military radar, for fear of interference. However, improved technologies, to priorities the incumbent’s traffic and to ensure that wireless transmissions only take place in vacant channels, are making a larger amount of spectrum usable.

For instance, the US’s CBRS (Citizens’ Broadband Radio Service) in 3.5 GHz supports three tiers of access - top priority for federal incumbents; medium priority for holders of licenses (yet to be awarded); and then a general access system for license-exempt sharing. This scheme is of high interest in other parts of the world and may be emulated by other regulators if it is a success in the USA. MulteFire is targeting the CBRS band as well as 5 GHz for its technology.

Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is driving a coalition, whose founding members include AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and the Wi-Fi Alliance. They hope to build on some of the advances in spectrum sharing, and protection for incumbents, which are being proposed for the 3.5 GHz CBRS band, in order to have similar schemes in 3.7-4.2 GHz.

As yet, there is not 802.11 technology targeting CBRS, but this is not the case in another shared spectrum band, the TV white spaces (TVWS) in the sub-1 GHz UHF and VHF broadcast bands.

Over seven years of research and lobbying have gone into the effort to harness TVWS for wireless broadband, but only a few countries have opened up the spectrum as yet (the US and UK are among those which have done so), and real world deployments have been limited. However, the combination of geolocation databases, spectrum monitoring and cognitive radios, pioneered in TVWS to avoid interference with incumbents, will be influential on sharing schemes round the world.

Microsoft is still championing TVWS as a US wireless platform. In July 2017, it created the Rural Airband Initiative and will invest in partnerships with telecoms companies to create 12 projects in 12 states over the next 12 months, to connect 2m people. This could revive interest in the underused 802.11af protocol (an implementation of Wi-Fi which supports low power, long range links in the white spaces). This is one of a handful of TVWS protocols devised by the IEEE.

European regulators have focused on Licensed Shared Access (LSA) more than the US approach, which is called Authorized Shared Access (ASA). LSA enables operators to share


65


spectrum with incumbents, but maintains a licensed approach. In April 2017, European standards group ETSI published specifications for LSA in the 2.3 GHz to 2.4 GHz band, which aim to achieve more efficient sharing between licensed and unlicensed airwaves, and between LSA licensees and existing spectrum users. Extensions of the protocols to other bands may be considered in future, depending on regulatory and commercial requirements.

ASA supports a limited number of operators coexisting within the same band under a license (which may be a short term or flexible one). The second tier of the CBRS scheme (Priority Access Licensees) falls into this category, while the third tier (General Access) is unlicensed.

In July 2017, the new FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, circulated a draft notice of inquiry on possible expansion of flexible spectrum usage, similar to CBRS, in the whole range from 3.7 GHz to 24 GHz.

As spectrum sharing and anti-interference techniques improve, there is the prospect of dynamic spectrum access evolving for 5G. This would enable service providers to use a given amount of spectrum for a short period of time, to support a particular application or location, paying on a per-usage basis and then returning the airwaves to the pool.

5.5 Regulatory and spectrum framework for 5G

The spectrum and regulatory frameworks for 5G are unclear as yet but almost all stakeholders believe there will be an increased level of integration of unlicensed and licensed spectrum.

This is one of the central areas of focus for the WBA as it maps the role of unlicensed spectrum in 5G services. It is an active advocate of flexible spectrum schemes, new approaches to sharing, and ways to combine licensed and unlicensed bands to boost overall capacity and spectral efficiency.

Examples of technical work or white papers which the WBA has published in the past year include15:

5G Networks – The Role of Wi-Fi and Unlicensed Technologies

Coordinated Shared Spectrum

Roadmap for Coexistence and Convergence in 5G – Market Research

Unlicensed Spectrum LTE – Market Drivers and Roadmap

15 https://www.wballiance.com/resources/wba-white-papers/


66


This work will contribute to the creation of a converged wireless broadband ecosystem, and drive a coordinated approach to complex issues. Those issues include

how to understand, prioritize, and mechanize QoS metrics to enable the seamless use of Wi-Fi

how to improve upon current 3GPP and Wi-Fi Alliance policy standards related to Wi-Fi usage for enhanced interoperability in complex environments

how to best approach the coordinated use of shared spectrum

and how to evolve existing value chains and roaming models to create, new monetizable opportunities for unlicensed wireless within the 5G Internet of Things (IoT).

As highlighted in these documents, 5G is likely to build on several developments which have already been initiated but will be very important to increase spectral efficiency and capacity in the 5G phase:

Carrier aggregation of licensed and unlicensed spectrum, or multiple unlicensed bands.

Centralized and virtualized control of unlicensed and licensed spectrum technologies, with dynamic allocation of traffic between them, according to requirement.

Network slicing) including the creation of virtual slices of network capacity including licensed and unlicensed airwaves as available

Support for unlicensed bands in 5G New Radio was adopted as a study item by the 3GPP RAN working group earlier this year, which means it could be included in the plan for Release 16. In studying unlicensed airwaves for 5G NR, 3GPP will examine sub-6 GHz and millimeter wave options, and how the radio could optimally use any bands in an unlicensed, shared or dynamic environment.

On the licensed spectrum side, there is some consensus emerging on the initial ‘candidate bands’ for 5G, though these will only be confirmed on a global basis at the ITU’s World Radio Conference (WRC-19 )in November 2019. This is the four-yearly event at which global and regional allocations of spectrum are agreed, forming the starting point for regulations round the world. The main areas of interest are highlighted in Figure 13 and include:

To assign more current broadcast spectrum for wireless broadband e.g. 600 MHz

To allocate 3.6-3.8 GHz as a new mobile band

To add centimeter and millimeter Wave bands to the 5G spectrum portfolio

http://www.wballiance.com/wireless-broadband-alliance-calls-for-ecosystem-collaboration-and-inputs-to-standardize-quality-of-service-on-carrier-wi-fi/

http://www.wballiance.com/wireless-broadband-alliance-calls-for-ecosystem-collaboration-and-inputs-to-standardize-quality-of-service-on-carrier-wi-fi/

http://www.wballiance.com/operators-outline-importance-of-identity-and-interoperability-in-unlicensed-iot-networks/




67


To assign airwaves currently allocated for fixed wireless to 5G, especially in 3.4-3.6 GHz

To refarm some existing 2G/3G and eventually 4G bands for 5G

To allow multiple air interfaces to coexist in the same band, sharing the available capacity flexibly, as demonstrated by Huawei’s CloudAir technology. This would also include unlicensed spectrum technologies.

Figure 13. Current and future cellular spectrum bands to 2025. Source: Analysys Mason

(Some of these bands, such as 700 MHz and 2.3 GHz, are already in use in some countries for 4G but are not yet globally harmonized – but may be for the 5G era.)

The US, European Union, Japan, China and South Korea are among the countries which have identified ‘candidate bands’ for 5G, including mmWave options. The European Union


68


approved the 5G Action Plan16 in September 2016. Some 3.5 GHz auctions have already taken place, for instance in Czech Republic and Ireland. These are technology neutral but are likely to be used, by some operators, for early 5G. Auctions and allocations focused on 5G are starting to take place in sub-1 GHz bands too. These include the USA’s incentive auction of 600 MHz broadcast spectrum and 700 MHz auctions in the European Union (the first was held by Germany in 2015).

5.5.1 Millimeter wave bands

Millimeter and centimeter wave bands, especially between 26 GHz and 80 GHz, will be important for additional capacity, especially for dense networks made up of small cells, whether Wi-Fi or cellular. The licensing regime for emerging mmWave bands is not yet known, and there are many debates, especially in the US, about how much of this spectrum should be kept license-free. Those which support a high level of unlicensed spectrum say this will promote competition and new services.

At the most recent World Radio Conference, WRC-15, a range of high frequency bands was identified for potential 5G use. These are 24.25-27.5 GHz, 31.8-33.4 GHz, 37-40.5 GHz, 40.5-42.5 GHz, 42.5-43.5 GHz, 45.5-47 GHz, 47-47.2 GHz, 47.2-50.2 GHz, 50.4-52.6 GHz, 66-76 GHz and 81- 86 GHz.

The US is setting the pace on allocating mmWave spectrum and in late 2015, it also identified the initial high frequency bands of interest for potential 5G usage (see Figure 14). These differ somewhat from the WRC-15 list and consist of 28 GHz (27.5 to 28.35 GHz); 37 GHz (37 to 38.6 GHz); 39 GHz (38.6 to 40 GHz); and the 64-71 GHz. There has already been significant activity already by operators, testing pre-standard 5G radios in the 28 GHz and 39 GHz spectrum. There are also tests happening in countries such as South Korea, the UK and many others, testing how cellular or 802.11 technologies operate in high frequency bands, even beyond 100 GHz in a few experimental cases.

The FCC has consulted on keeping the whole band from 66 GHz to 71 GHz unlicensed, to complement the current 60 GHz (57-66 GHz) band.

16 https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/5g-europe-action-plan


69


Figure 14. The US view of potential new spectrum sources for 5G

In other regions, there are few indications yet as to how mmWave spectrum will be licensed and whether other regulators will expand the license-exempt portion but there is very high interest in the potential to expand wireless capacity in these frequencies, and a great deal of the early work on mmWave radio has been carried out in 60 GHz with WiGig.

5.6 Security Privacy and Identity Policies

Traditionally, a challenge of unlicensed spectrum has been the perceived difficulty in managing security, privacy, identity confirmation and authentication. Addressing concerns in these areas has been a key area of WBA activity because it underpins almost all the target business cases for public Wi-Fi.

Improved security mechanisms have come from the IEEE standards, the Wi-Fi Alliance, the WBA and the industry over the years, so there is now a multilayered system of mechanisms which can protect the user and the network in unlicensed public spectrum. This year’s WBA annual survey showed that many operators and vendors are using multiple authentication methods – 69% still employ user name/password, but 51% support SIM card authentication, and other mechanisms – in various combinations – include WISPr and other EAP methods.

The tools are increasingly in place to ensure a secure experience in unlicensed spectrum for consumers and businesses, but most provisioning and authentication procedures assume display and input capabilities. That means there will be a whole range of new issues associated with the IoT and its simple devices. This has been addressed within


70


NGH, with the WBA working on ways to expand its on-boarding definition to enable IoT devices with no input mechanisms to be provisioned with NGH security credentials17.

The multi-RAT 5G platform will bring new challenges in security provisioning because of its density - frequent handovers and authentications between access points in close proximity but different bands, combined with low latency response for some services. This is envisaged as an important role for SDN orchestration, which will be able to simplify and automate authentication handover via global management of HetNets. These platforms will be able to share users’ security context information among related access points in any spectrum18.

6 Opportunities towards 5G

6.1 How the ecosystem can benefit from the co-existence and convergence of Wi-Fi within 5G

In addition to supporting the evolution of the current consumer-centric business models, 5G will expand to enable operators to support vertical industries with new vertical revenue streams, and contribute to the mobilization of industries and industry processes beyond the MNO-centric traditional model. 5G comes with the promise of unseen services and a broad range of new use cases and business models ranging from enabling autonomous vehicles to smart agriculture and factories. 5G is expected to push the digitization of the economy further due to its ability to handle large volumes of data with low latency in real time.

The multitude of 5G use cases require a variety of radio technologies. In dense environments, unlicensed technologies coupled with core networks can increase the access network capacity and benefit users’ wireless experience.

Importantly, these new 5G environments such as factories, cities, automotive, energy, and eHealth are typically served by private networks, frequently based on Wi-Fi technology so it is natural to envisage the role of Wi-Fi in the evolution towards 5G.

The role of Wi-Fi as an integral part of 5G is driven by new technologies such as 802.11ax and the spectrum bands combination derived efficiencies of technologies such 802.11ad, sub-6Ghz and mmWave.

17 WBA, ‘Internet of Things: New Vertical Value Chains & Interoperability’ https://www.wballiance.com/resources/wba-white-papers/ .

18 Authentication Handover and Privacy Protection in 5G HetNets Using Software-Defined Networking

https://www.wballiance.com/resources/wba-white-papers/


71


Unlicensed technologies such as LAA and LWA are expected to complement licensed technologies to provide increased capacity for small cells in a variety of locations such as indoor for enterprises and public venues, and outdoor hotspots and events.

Therefore, the whole wireless ecosystem can only benefit from the successful and seamless convergence between licensed and unlicensed technologies including Wi-Fi.

6.2 What the WBA role is in enabling that convergence

The challenge of addressing a wide range of vertical sectors and use cases is that the Wi-Fi industry is no longer working with a single ecosystem focused on Internet access and consumer data. Instead, players need to form an understanding of, and working relationships with, other industries which can harness wireless to improve their own productivity and services. This is one of the most important roles of the WBA, which has identified some key sectors in which there are significant opportunities for Wi-Fi providers. Within those, it can help facilitate communications between vertical and wireless stakeholders, as the basis for a rich ecosystem in that sector.

A strong example is the WBA’s Connected Cities’ Advisory Board. This forges links with cities, helping the Wi-Fi sector to understand their requirements and the business opportunities for wireless. And it looks ahead to 5G, since the WBA has identified smart cities as an important 5G use case in which unlicensed spectrum will take a leading role.

These processes of communication, gathering requirements, setting specifications, and building foundations for next generation networks, are vital to ensure that 5G, when it comes, serves the needs of Wi-Fi operators, and of a whole range of vertical industries, by harnessing and integrating many available radio access technologies and spectrum bands.

The WBA proposes to work on some of the following areas where Wi-Fi is falling short of 5G expectations. Those include:

Wi-Fi related evolution - Address Wi-Fi provisioning gaps, Wi-Fi Performance Instrumentation to enable enhanced aggregation solutions

Roaming framework - WRIX enhancements for 5G Roaming of new non-SIM based identifiers

New use cases and projects - 802.11 in Vehicular Environments and Rail Environments and Integrated Keying Hierarchy

5G Testing & Interoperability - Testing the 5G unlicensed wireless building blocks aided by a convergent approach with the cellular world and interworking


72


WBA members are kicking-off new 5G streams to address the above-mentioned areas as well as WRIX enhancements for 5G Roaming.

The industry is certain that 5G will be a combination of licensed and unlicensed technologies and Wi-Fi is the leading unlicensed technology under the 5G umbrella. The convergence and coexistence of those technologies will require a great deal of work between the various standard bodies including the WBA.

7 Analysis of 2017 Industry Survey

This year’s annual WBA survey produced some very interesting results, spanning a wide range of topics related to unlicensed spectrum, smart cities, Wi-Fi evolution and wireless business models.

7.1 Next Generation Hotspot has crossed a chasm:

The survey this year indicates far higher rates of adoption indicated than in previous years – as vendors have increasingly supported the technology in their systems and the WBA’s initiatives have helped to promote its benefits and make it easy to deploy. 88% already have or plan to deploy NGH compliant networks by end of 2019. However to support the investment and deployments, it will be a priority for WBA to continue its programs to help organizations understand the benefits of NGH.


73


For those who are deploying NGH or planning to do so, the most important commercial driver is to ease seamless access between Wi-Fi and licensed networks, which aligns well with the core themes of the WBA’s program and how it sees 5G evolving. 70% said this was a key driver, while almost as many (67.7%) cited the need to improve customer experience in order to reduce churn. The third most important driver was to enable seamless access across multiple Wi-Fi networks, with 55% selecting that.

7.2 Investment confidence is driven by convergence:

Any industry relies heavily on confidence to invest in technology, and instilling that confidence via standard platforms, future-proof systems and ease of deployment is a key role of the WBA. The efforts are paying off, according to the survey – >90% of respondents say they are as confident or more confident about investing in Wi-Fi than they were a year ago.


74


As for unlicensed spectrum, wireless as a whole, almost 89% feel as or more confident than a year ago on their level of planned investment.

It is clear from these results that extending an investment strategy to encompass many unlicensed spectrum technologies, which can complement and augment Wi-Fi, is a boost to confidence. The more these technologies can coexist and even converge, the greater flexibility and future-proofing organizations can achieve.

According to the survey, 43% say that convergence is either crucial or very important to their current network strategy, while 33% say it is important. The results are even more dramatic when it comes to coexistence, with 57% rating this crucial or very important, and 25% important. For future networks, these factors will be even more important with 84% of businesses rating is as important or above. The ratings for coexistence are even higher, at 90%

Operators are looking to deploy an increasingly complex mixture of wireless technologies, with contrasting choices depending on their business models and spectrum assets. Overall, the survey showed current networks weighted towards cellular (2G/3G/4G) with almost 56% of respondents having those technologies implemented, while 28% have next generation Wi-Fi. Almost 63% plan to deploy next generation Wi-Fi in future, 36% of them in the coming year, while 43% plan to implement a LPWAN in unlicensed spectrum (in addition to 7% which already have).


75


There is also interest in bringing cellular technologies into unlicensed spectrum, though this is lower than in Wi-Fi – for instance, 45% plan to deploy LTE-LAA, while a similar number are interested in converging Wi-Fi and LTE via the emerging LWA/LWIP standards. Of course, 5G attracts high interest, though inevitably its deployment is weighted towards the later years of the study – over 76% plan to implement it over the coming years.

7.3 Traffic patterns will change as services evolve:

Wireless traffic will continue to grow exponentially, but for operators, it is essential to know which services are driving that, and to plan and monetize the network accordingly. Respondents selected the services which they believe will do most to drive traffic ‘growth’ in future. The top three emerged as IoT and new vertical services (almost 70% selected this), streaming video (60%) and Wi-Fi Calling (almost 44%). Some of this is driven by a belief in volumes of new services (IoT), whilst others (streaming video) are self-explanatory. There will be a wide range of applications which will drive additional traffic over the next few years, enabled by the improved capacity, coverage and QoS of the converged networks.


76


Urban areas, of course, are a particular source of dense usage and high traffic. In cities, the respondents expect retail malls, public transport (from airplanes to trains), transport hubs such as major stations, and stadiums or venues to be the main drivers of traffic (in that order).

In terms of venues in any environment, stadiums lead the way, with 48% saying these will drive the greatest traffic growth over the coming year, followed by public transport and malls. This brings with it the key challenges of servicing dense areas of traffic and the business/monetization model to support it.

7.4 Services and monetization

When looking at the most important services to impact monetization strategies over the next 12 months, the top three emerged as location based services (37.5% placed in the top three); roaming (33%) and marketing analytics (almost 33%).

But providing internet access to as many users as possible remains the core mission and business case for public Wi-Fi. When asked to identify three services which are relevant to these networks over 85% cited internet access, followed by almost 52% who selected city services, and 45% for location based services.

For the current business, the survey shows that operators believe the further evolution and monetization of Wi-Fi is the factor which supports the biggest business opportunity with more than 85% seeing the evolution of Wi-Fi and monetization and network


77


evolution to 5G rated as the key factors in terms of business opportunity, highlighting the importance of convergence.

7.5 Connected cities drive the future business case:

The business and use cases for connected cities are becoming compelling. 40% of the survey respondents say they have already deployed a city public Wi-Fi network and 43% plan to do so by the end of 2018. This reflects a booming level of confidence in this use case – 83% feel more confident about investing than they did a year ago.

A range of business models will be adopted to monetize city networks, the most common being free access for users, with sponsorship from a third party such as advertisers – 37% believe this will be their primary model, followed by 19% who cite unlimited free usage and almost 10% who want to offer free usage but with speed or other limitations. But from our Urban Unconnected research conducted earlier this year, the main business drivers at a City level are in terms of providing access to services for citizens, improving the local economics by providing developmental opportunities and through improved services to visitors.

The City Wi-Fi Roaming initiative has been an important aspect of the WBA’s connected city program this year and attracts a high level of interest. In the survey, 77% are


78


interested or very interested in this capability, and over 71% have already or are planning to implement some city Wi-Fi roaming services by the end of 2019.

The main benefits are seen to be ease of use for inbound visitors, cited by 73% of those surveyed, followed by attracting tourists, and supporting targeted advertising to visitors.

There are challenges of course. The primary ones are lack of a clear and direct business model, as perceived by 78%.

7.6 Challenges still exist, for network deployment and services:

Of course, any complex network deployment faces challenges, both in implementing the network and refining the business model. For public Wi-Fi deployments, 82% said business model and monetization strategies were the biggest challenge, while 79% cited capex costs, and almost 60% operating costs. Other issues include privacy and security, and meeting high user expectations for quality of experience.

The respondents were also asked about challenges in developing new wireless services. These also focused on business models and the return on capex and opex investment – these factors were chosen by 70%, while for 53%, ensuring QoE was the critical issue, and for 41% it was the integration of licensed and unlicensed technologies to enable the new


79


service. Device availability, security, stable standards and spectrum availability are also important requirements.

8 Addendum

• LoRaWAN™ is specified by the Lora Alliance and supports the connectivity of wireless battery-operated objects. It operates in regional, national and global scopes, which makes it suitable for city deployments at multiple spatial scales. LoRaWAN™ supports IoT applications in smart cities in terms of secure bi-directional communications, mobility, localization and interoperability services. Most important, LoRaWAN is deployed in a flexible and cost effective way, which obviates the need for complex installations to interconnect IoT devices. As such, it facilitates cities, business and other stakeholders to deploy enterprise scale IoT infrastructures and to roll out services on top of them.

• NarrowBand IoT (NB-IoT) takes advantage of cellular spectrum bands to provide devices connectivity. NB-IoT is a narrowband radio technology, which is standardized by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). It is based on LTE radio specifications, can be deployed on existing LTE infrastructure, and is compatible with broadband LTE systems. It provides excellent indoor coverage at a low cost, while ensuring long battery life for the connected devices. A companion 3GPP standard is LTE Cat-M (Machine), which has higher power consumption and data rates than NB-IoT. It is being deployed ahead of NB-IoT in some regions, most prominently by the major US operators. Some operators will deploy both technologies in parallel for different use cases, while others will rely entirely on NB-IoT, and in future, 5G-IoT.

• Ultra-Narrow Band (UNB) technology transmits over very narrow spectrum channels, (i.e. typically <1KHz) to achieve ultra-long distance linking of transmitters and receivers. UNB technology is used by SigFox for its IoT deployments that include quite sophisticated base stations, which monitor the full 192 kHz spectrum and look for UNB signals to demodulate. Note that Sigfox’s deployments are based on a cellular-like UNB systems. The company targets the development of a global network outside the licensed spectrum, in collaboration with a network of partners worldwide. SigFox’s prominent position in the UNB market is the reason why SigFox is commonly used as synonymous to UNB.

• Wi-Fi HaLow, which is specified by Wi-Fi Alliance to operate in the 1GHz ISM ((Industrial, Scientific and Medical) band. It is based on the IEEE 802.11ah protocol and offers longer range, lower power operation, yet with lower throughput when compared to other Wi-Fi technologies. As such it is destined to support IoT devices deployed in larger areas.

Date post:	25-Jan-2020
Category:	Documents
Upload:	others
View:	1 times
Download:	0 times

WBA Annual Industry Report 2017/18Maravedis-Rethink makes no warranties express or implied as to the...

Documents