I was asked by someone recently over a discussion at a cafe located at heart of Delhi. The topic came on table, over news published by a daily, on NDMC’s plans to provide public Wi-Fi at some key areas across Delhi. And my choice obviously goes with Wi-Fi, irrespective of location I prefer to work from- as long as it’s reasonable & helps in getting work done.
Delhi, the capital of India, doesn’t boast good Wi-Fi connectivity. Barring some exceptions now, there are many public places, where Wi-Fi could have played a larger role over the years in providing seamless data connectivity to visitors/commuters. But after years of efforts, thing are rolling as many companies are now quite serious over the plans on providing Wi-Fi at public places. That’s good news!
There’re multiple pros with Wi-Fi at moment and why I still bank of technology despite its some key shortcomings. We are quite used to Wi-Fi now, especially Indian youth & working class. We use Wi-Fi now at offices, homes or even at public places. Some of them use it on move also. It’s simple to use. What we need is just a Wi-Fi enabled device & credentials to use it. So if you are using it at office, there’s common pass-phrase among various groups shared to access or at public places, where we need to just plug in our laptops & buy a token/coupon from service provider/venue owner to get rolling . Places like Airports & some star Hotels, offer Wi-Fi free of charge for certain period of usage to all visitors. You just need to register for service.
Over the years Wi-Fi has evolved a lot, as a technology & ecosystem both. There were two major concerns on usage of Wi-Fi which stalled its pervasive use at public place. First was security. It’s was always presumed that Wi-Fi is insecure technology and any anonymous user can hack or misuse it easily. But since year 2007, after release of 802.11n, the latest popular standard of Wi-Fi, by governing body of IEEE, all security myths surrounding Wi-Fi are placed to rest forever. With release of 802.11n version of Wi-Fi standard, access points are equipped with WPA/WPA2 Public/Private Authentication mechanism along with AES/CCMP based 128 bit encryption mechanism, which are near impossible to break-in. Even our cellular network isn’t that robust, if you compare with present Wi-Fi Authentication-Encryption mechanism. All major Wi-Fi equipment vendors have already upgraded their equipment to latest standard & shipping them with most robust security mechanism. Although some of them are still offering old vulnerable security mechanisms, users of Wi-Fi are provided options to upgrade to latest standard in exchange of nominal fees.
Second concern was & still remains a challenge to some extent. It’s interference/noise over Wi-Fi band. Being license free band (we call it 2.4 GHz ISM & 5 GHz UNII/ISM Open bands), any user/institution/entity is free to deploy Wi-Fi inside their premises for private use. If you want to offer commercial Wi-Fi, all you need is ISP license, but no license is needed for frequency/band usage, unlike Cellular, where service providers need to buy band/spectrum before offering services. So at moment, you could see many of the educational hubs, residential societies & corporate parks have already deployed Wi-Fi for their own purpose. It has now quite become commonplace to get Wi-Fi signals, while on move in large metros at least. With so much of widespread use already, deploying new Wi-Fi becomes a challenge. Being limited band, you need to reuse same frequencies used by your neighbors. And that’s where trouble starts. The problem of interference is most common in 2.4 GHz band at moment, as most of the smartphone, laptops are equipped with network adapters for 2.4 GHz band only. The other, 5 GHz band is relatively less crowded, but few devices availability for the band makes it less preferred band to deploy Wi-Fi at moment.
Although, with advent of 802.11ac/ad (next release of Wi-Fi standard after 802.11n), which uses only 5 GHz UNII & ISM bands, things are likely to change. If you have bought in 802.11ac Access point or home router and have Smartphone/Laptop/Device that support 5 GHz band (iPhone, Samsung Galaxy), you are on ‘Cloud 9’ already. With data rate in ranges of 500-1000 Mbps, you are virtually getting at least 100x speed as compared to latest cellular technology deployed i.e. 3G. Although in practice you get some realistic speeds of 10-50 Mbps, those are still far higher than what you could get from 3G or even 4G.
With advent of technology, many leading Wi-Fi equipment vendors like Cisco, Ruckus & Aruba have equipped their Access points & other ecosystem devices to support, latest technology like Smart Antenna, MIMO Antenna, MCS Coding & Beamforming to combat challenges of interference, noise and provide data rates at 100s of Mbps. Although this comes at some cost, but still it’s far cheaper to deploy Wi-Fi as compared to Cellular network, especially for those providers who are seriously planning to deploy Wi-Fi to mitigate rise in data demand.
The growing interest in Wi-Fi is understandable. As per latest CISCO VNI reports, data uptake is going to increase 11 times from year 2013 to 2018, with CAGR of 61{af589cdba9d77786c8c861317dbad60bba1e2ebbf56e2ffab874a1b59fde9ce3}, and will reach to 16 petabytes by 2018 globally. The same report also highlights the fact that more & more data from users will flow on Wi-Fi by 2018, which clearly signals the growing importance of Wi-Fi in coming years.
So, why Wi-Fi is better over cellular, especially when it comes to data access? It’s simple to use & offers clear, line-of-sight connectivity from users to Access points (10-100 m distance). Unlike Cellular connectivity, which involves complex multi-path propagation of signals from base station to users, Wi-Fi wins due to proximity of Access Points to end users. It offers the highest possible speeds/data rate, especially to users sitting at one location or slow moving traffic near vicinity of Access points, currently in range of 10-50 Mbps and going to increase at least 20 times within next 2 years. It has become more robust to interference, thanks to new feature set equipped access points & ecosystem by vendors. And finally, it has become far more robust & secure with evolution of Wi-Fi standards, especially inclusion of more secure authentication-encryption mechanisms. Over next 2 years, with advent of 802.11ac devices in marketplace, deployment of Wi-Fi in 5 GHz band, will drive data rates further to as high as 1.3 Gigabits in certain conditions and will offer better interference free Wi-Fi experience to users.
Why public places should have Wi-Fi? Probably the best reasoning comes from the logic that, Wi-Fi offers best value proposition by offering Value-for-Money experience for visitors at public places, especially venues like Shopping malls, Airports, Cafes & Parks etc. It offers the best of world experience for savvy users, who love to be always connected to outside world, simultaneously offering enhanced experience for visitors, a win-win proposition to venue owners & Wi-Fi Service providers.
In India, Wi-Fi deployments till date are dominated by ISPs in public places but those have very limited reach. Things are likely to change (or changing already in-fact!), as all major telecom players have either started deploying Wi-Fi or have clearly set road-map to deploy Wi-Fi in next two years over wider geography. And with arrival of HotSpot 2.0 Wi-Fi inter-operability & fast-secure-roaming standard, currently in pilot phase, Wi-Fi users will automatically get associated with any access points across globe, after meeting certain requirement of certification under Passpoint Program by Wi-Fi Alliance. This experience would be similar to cellular roaming experience, where users can roam on Wi-Fi seamlessly, without any manual intervention for data connectivity.
Albeit with all facts, Cellular Network evolution & real life deployments, especially for data usage, couldn’t cope up with growing data demands. Although with 3G-HSPA and sooner with 4G-LTE, we are likely to see major shift in data rates offered, but certainly those wouldn’t be as high as present or future Wi-Fi standards. Move over, these deployments are scattered at major locations, which means users will continue to have patchy experience on Cellular network. With advent of Home Femto cells & enterprise Small Cells, we do see shift in ecosystem for Cellular, but real life challenges are many here for seamless data experience. In summary, it means, Wi-Fi would remain preferred choice of data access.