Lines Between LANs, WANs Now Blurring

The old distinctions between indoor connectivity and public network services, blurred with the advent of mobility to an extent, are changing.

“We’re seeing a lot of demand from enterprise customers for blurring the line between what has historically been a wide area network, mobile, with a local area network, which has traditionally been wired,” said John Donovan, AT&T Communications CEO. Private 5G and 4G networks, indoor small cells and 5G network features all are combining to create new possibilities.

Industrial internet of things networks on the factory floor might well use private 5G instead of Wi-Fi. In other cases 5G small cells might be operated by integrators or public networks.

Perhaps the biggest shift for mobile operators is substitution of mobile access for Wi-Fi access.

Indoor space has been a big coverage issue for mobile operators, and has created space for Wi-Fi to become a key part of access infrastructure. But some argue 5G will start to shift access back towards mobile networks. In the 3G era, users switched to Wi-Fi at times because it did not apply against their usage allowances, and in part because Wi-Fi tended to offer faster access than did the 3G network.

That changed in the 4G era, when Wi-Fi generally became slower than the mobile network.

In the 5G era, there is likely to be more use of the mobile network, in part because of spectrum aggregation. Tariffs and usage allowances also will make a difference.

In the 5G era, it is conceivable that Wi-Fi offload will happen less than it did in the 3G and 4G eras.

source: Cisco  

That might be aided by a number of other changes, beyond 5G usage allowances and tariffs. Indoor coverage by small cell might include access to virtual networks that offer consumers of business users network features not available on the Wi-Fi network, and enabled by network slicing, for example.

If, for example, network slicing is used to create differentiated speed tiers (gold, silver, bronze) plans, mobile customers will lose the advantage of their premium plans when switching to Wi-Fi.

If one assumes outdoor space will be the place where mobile coverage is most valuable, indoor space will remain a more-contested arena where access options will be more diverse, where third parties will have a greater role, where the ability to support private network features at the indoor edge will open up new possibilities for end users, mobile operators and third parties.

One way of looking at new 5G-driven business and revenue opportunities, as well as “do it yourself” private premises networking, is the whole matter of “indoor signal reception,” which is not a new problem for mobile service providers, but will be more acute as millimeter wave frequencies become more common.

Since the advent of 2-GHz frequencies for 3G and 4G, consumers and providers alike have become accustomed to the idea that indoor signal coverage often will be an issue. Such problems will be worse when frequencies above 3.5 GHz start to be used commercially (28 GHz, 39 GHz, 60 GHz as examples).

Not all problems with indoor coverage are related directly to frequency, of course. Some parts of any network might be locally congested because of high traffic. Some parts of any network might have received signal power issues or other “weak signal” issues caused by terrain or foliage, for example. In other cases, service providers might not be able to place cell sites in the optimal locations because building owners will not allow such radio sites.

Tall buildings, in some areas, might have problems when users try to connect to local cells that are not as tall as the buildings they are in, in urban areas. Some users might be able to receive signals from several cell sites, but not an especially strong signal from any of them.

Even energy-efficient windows and buildings designed for energy efficiency will further degrade indoor signals.

So one way of looking at 5G business potential is to position mobile operators primarily as “outside the building” coverage providers. Indoor coverage essentially starts to look more like the private network (local area networks, premises wiring networks Wi-Fi networks) scenario, creating a potentially bigger role for “indoor connectivity” business models of various types.

“Do it yourself” always is an option, as it has been for Wi-Fi and other indoor access networks. Then there are “venue network providers,” which might be enterprises such as hotels, third party providers such as Boingo or perhaps new providers of neutral host infrastructure that charge a fee to all mobile network service providers.

Most service providers have tended to stay away from indoor small cell operation themselves except in large venues (sports and entertainment venues, big shopping malls). Outdoor small cells make better sense, in most cases.

So the issue is whether a new group of “indoor wireless connectivity” specialists emerges.