Blog posts – Carrier Wi-Fi

5G monetization and ROI

The Challenges of Profitable 5G

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This is an excerpt from our white paper Wi-Fi in the 5G Era – Strategy Guide for Operators. If you like what you read, the full white paper is available here. Don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.

Download White Paper

THE VAST MAJORITY OF DEVICES ARE WI-FI-ONLY

The world is firmly on the road to ubiquitous 5G networks and services – but how will service providers pull off investing in new networks while sustaining even modest growth rates and staying profitable under current market conditions? That is one of the mobile telecom industry’s most pressing questions.

Billions of Cellular and Wi-Fi Devices shipped in 2018-2019

While the global 5G industry will be ramping up over the next many years to serve billions of IoT devices, private or public 5G networks for industry, self-driving cars, remote surgery, and more – the real challenge is what to do now to keep both current and future network costs as low as possible.

We believe one important component of profitable services in the 5G era is carrier Wi-Fi in all its forms.

5G WILL NOT ENJOY RAPID GROWTH OF NEW SUBSCRIBERS

When 4G was about at the same level of maturity as 5G is today – which was at around 2008 or so – global mobile broadband penetration stood at about 7%. Today, penetration stands at 69% globally with mature markets fully saturated.

Mobile Broadband Penetration 2002-2018

Mobile operators who invested in 4G technologies had a lot to build their return-on-investment (ROI) on. They doubled the number of cellular subscriptions and mobile broadband traffic grew by a factor of ten. Now that everybody already has a subscription, what revenue sources will pay for 5G rollout? New 5G services of course, where IoT is one of the most promising opportunities.

But will it be enough?

Mobile operators have every reason to begin looking for other cost-effective ways to deliver their services.

It also remains to be seen if mobile operators will be able to increase their Average Revenue Per Unit (ARPU) when 5G is deployed at scale. Many will probably see a flattening as opposed to declining ARPU trend as a major victory. At least initially, most consumers may not be in immediate need of higher data rates – and when they are, they are increasingly unlikely to accept paying more for faster services.

BUILDING PENETRATION 100 TIMES WORSE ON 95% OF 5G BANDS

At the same time, consumers will continue expect unlimited data bundles and high service quality. Uncapped mobile broadband data bundles will fuel the need for operators to actively offload traffic to Wi-Fi. Back in the day when users had to pay for every megabyte of data, operators knew that users were desperately looking for Wi-Fi networks to connect to wherever they went. Once users were no longer connected to the operator’s network, they were considered irrelevant and out of reach. In a world with unlimited cellular subscriptions – or practically unlimited with very high data volume allowances – operators can no longer take this passive approach.

This is the commercial reality facing mobile operators today.

Add to this the technical challenges that mobile operators face with 5G: Because most 5G services operate at relatively high radio frequencies, getting indoor coverage right by beaming in radio signals from the outside is a significant challenge. In the near field of an antenna (within 1-2 m) the so-called coupling loss reduces the signal by 75% (-6 dB) for every doubling of the frequency. In addition to simple path loss the signal will meet obstacles on its way and must finally penetrate the walls of the building itself.

The indoor coverage challenge already exists in the case of 4G. For example: 20% of buildings in the US are struggling with proper indoor coverage. The problem is exacerbated in the case of 5G because of the higher frequency bands involved. Initially 3.1-4.9 GHz is a commonly used frequency range but 5G will also employ the millimetre band above 30 GHz and at such frequencies, line of sight is required for signal reception. Already at the 5G frequency of 10 GHz the only indoor coverage option is to place your receiving device as close to an untreated pane of glass windowpane as possible. Energy-conserving glass used in many new buildings or other forms of treated glass panes will effectively attenuate the signal making indoor coverage more or less impossible.

5G AND WI-FI 6 HEAD TO THE ALTAR

5G and Wi-Fi head to the altar.

At Aptilo Networks we never understood why there would ever be a conflict nor any real competition between Wi-Fi and 5G.

On the contrary, the two technologies complement each other perfectly: One is for mobility and wide area coverage (5G), the other for high-performance and high-capacity connectivity indoors (Wi-Fi). And we cannot think of a single reason why operators should not use all the tools at their disposal to maximize profitability.

Read more about this and how operators should make the most of their Wi-Fi assets in our recent blog post Break organisational Silos.

Break Organisational Silos!

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This is an excerpt from our white paper Wi-Fi in the 5G Era – Strategy Guide for Operators. If you like what you read, the full white paper is available here. Don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.

Download White Paper

MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR WI-FI ASSETS

As approximately 80 percent of wireless data traffic is consumed indoors, 5G will drive an unprecedented need for densification of base stations and indoor solutions. The only reasonable conclusion is that operators must use all technologies and spectra available to satisfy their subscribers’ insatiable demand for data.

Aptilo believes that Wi-Fi is the perfect complement to 5G for indoor coverage. Wi-Fi is also an essentially untapped resource that many operators are working with already and thus have at their disposal. This is of course especially the case among operators whose current organizational structures are a result of mergers between fixed and mobile service providers.

Regretfully it is still often the case that staff responsible for fixed and mobile services continue to work in separate organizational departments or ‘silos’. For example: While mobile teams deploy indoor cellular solutions at a venue such as a shopping mall, the fixed services team has already been to the same location to deploy Wi-Fi.

Mobile and fixed in organizational silos

To win in a fiercely competitive market such disparate departments should instead come together with the single goal of delivering the absolute best subscriber experience using both technologies. Operators just have to add a secure SSID (802.1x) to deliver an automatic and secure onboarding of their subscribers to their B2B footprint. Using the new captive portal API with venue URL, operators can still deliver user engagement to their revenue generating B2B customers. Compare this with the costly deployment of indoor 5G coverage, which delivers no user engagement.

Mobile and fixed organizations working together

HOW WI-FI COMPLEMENTS 5G

Parts of the mobile industry leadership has been skeptical towards adopting Wi-Fi as carrier-grade technology because it has been viewed as a best-effort service as a result of lack of scheduling mechanisms and the use of unlicensed spectrum.

Fortunately, Wi-Fi technology is right now evolving at such a rapid pace that we believe wireless connectivity in general is on the cusp of fundamental change – a paradigm shift (Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 7, coming in 2024, with even more deterministic connectivity at well over 30 Gbps). Soon the Wi-Fi quality shortcomings of the past will be firmly relegated to the history books.

Instead, Wi-Fi will – at least in the case of indoor connectivity – be leading the market in speed, capacity, latency, and overall quality by a wide margin. Learn more about this shift in our White Paper.

At Aptilo Networks we never understood why there would ever be a conflict nor any real competition between Wi-Fi and 5G. On the contrary, the two technologies complement each other perfectly: One is for mobility and wide area coverage (5G), the other for high-performance and high-capacity connectivity indoors (Wi-Fi). And we cannot think of a single reason why operators should not use all the tools at their disposal to maximize profitability.

In October 2020, Aptilo was acquired by Enea, one of the world’s leading suppliers of innovative software for telecommunication and cybersecurity. Enea is now one of the very few vendors in the world offering solutions both within the Wi-Fi and 5G domain.

We believe that carrier Wi-Fi is the perfect complement to cellular in the 5G era principally for the following four reasons:

  1. New Wi-Fi 6 technology with the same scheduling capabilities as cellular and lots of new unlicensed spectrum provides a massive boost to Wi-Fi connectivity speed, capacity, and quality – and as always, Wi-Fi equipment is exceedingly cost efficient.
  2. Most 5G operating frequencies penetrate poorly to the indoors and will need Wi-Fi as a complement to deliver seamless indoor coverage and capacity – and we know that 80% or more of the smartphone traffic is already now consumed indoors.
  3. Wi-Fi is the dominant IoT technology by a wide margin, with around 80% of all IoT devices connecting via short-range technologies such as Wi-Fi.
  4. Carrier-grade service management solutions including seamless engagement/monetization methods and SIM or certificate-based Passpoint connectivity are mature, effective, and ready to be adopted by CSPs everywhere.
Libert Latin America and Aptilo is finalists in the Wi-Fi Now award

Liberty Latin America and Aptilo shortlisted for Wi-Fi Now Awards

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Once again we are finalists for an award together with our customer Liberty Latin America (LLA). This time it is Wi-Fi Now that has shortlisted us in Best Wi-Fi Service Provider category. It must be the innovative way they are rolling out homespots in selected markets across Central America and the Caribbean.

The rollout started with Liberty’s wholly owned Trinidadian subsidiary, Flow Trinidad. Aptilo and Flow completed the deployment of over 100,000 homespots in only 45 days.

This initiative allows Liberty Latin America to expand the benefits of their FlowID Identity Management service for customers across their portfolio of companies.

Thanks to Aptilo SMP and the use of Flow ID, there is very little, if any, customer support required. Once the user has logged in for the first time, their mobile device will memorize the Flow ID credentials automatically.