Boingo Wireless and Sprint have announced a multi-year Wi-Fi agreement, enabling Sprint customers seamless roaming onto Boingo Wi-Fi networks in 35 major U.S. airports.
Sprint devices within proximity of a Boingo hotspot can automatically connect to the Wi-Fi network seamlessly, providing service at the fastest speeds available, be that cellular from Sprint or Wi-Fi from Boingo, Sprint says.
The auto-authenticating Wi-Fi connections are available at no additional charge to all Sprint customers with capable devices, and usage while connected to Wi-Fi does not count towards a customer’s monthly service plan.
The deal illustrates a key change in mobile network access. Instead of representing a substitute form of access, Wi-Fi now allows mobile service providers to provide better end user experience at some locations, without consuming any of a user’s data plan.
“With Wi-Fi being the world’s largest wireless ecosystem, we view it as a highly complementary layer to our network,” said Stephen Bye, Sprint CTO. “By enabling customers to move seamlessly between secure Wi-Fi and cellular, our customers will have a better mobile experience in more locations, all while lowering their cost of data usage.”
In principle, the Sprint-Boingo deal illustrates how fifth generation mobile networks will be designed to work. Ideally, devices will choose from any available access network, choosing the strongest signal or best connection, automatically.
At least conceptually, there could be another shift. Traditional mobile networks were designed around session handoff between macrocells.
The 5G network might more nearly represent an architecture analogous to Wi-Fi: a dense network of small cells.
That means the process of registering a device to a hotspot is key, in addition to flipping back to a macrocell if Wi-Fi signal is too weak.
Where the traditional switching operation is between macrocells, the new switching operations might include shifts within a single macrocell, and choosing networks based on latency performance or bandwidth, not simply signal strength.
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