Up until fairly recently, Wi-Fi was about in-home PC connectivity. But a few factors – the popularity of smartphones, the advent of tablets, overburdened cellular networks, among others – have come together to make Wi-Fi ubiquitous and its use in public settings commonplace.

And the trend is only strengthening; In-Stat says that 800 million smartphones alone will ship in 2013 (and a few billion Wi-Fi equipped devices), and Cisco’s 2013 Global Mobile VNI report found that mobile offload will increase from 33 percent (429 petabytes/month) of mobile data traffic in 2012 to 46 percent (9.6 exabytes/month) in 2017.

In our exuberance to monetize the Wi-Fi industry, here are the three big ways where network operators or owners of service provider Wi-Fi deployments can mess it up (Note: the author’s employer, Cisco, makes and sells a variety of Wi-Fi equipment, but the content of this article applies equally to competing products as well).

Make it hard to access Wi-Fi

We have reached the point where we simply expect Wi-Fi to be readily available in airports, hotels and public places. And yet we all know the shock of discovering when the opposite is true. In most places, paying for Wi-Fi not only takes money out of consumers’ pockets, it’s also a hassle and a time suck. But keeping it free to consumers does not, in fact, destroy the business model. It creates others. The fact is people are enticed by free Wi-Fi.

Consider the tale of the cable MSO (I can’t name names yet) that added free Wi-Fi to its broadband package. The result: 15-18 percent churn reduction over 18 months. Now factor in what can happen with the addition of Wi-Fi network intelligence. Pairing free Wi-Fi with location-based analytics improves the business experience and opens up new revenue streams in crowded locations such as hotels and malls.

Say our friend Harry walks into IKEA. Call it a loyalty app, call it a mobile butler, call it a personal concierge – it gets awakened on his phone, by the intelligent network, and alerts him: “Want some free Wi-Fi, Harry, compliments of IKEA?” Harry agrees and is now on the IKEA Wi-Fi network, and chances are high that he’s looking for something IKEA can help him find or discover.

Now doing the opposite – making Wi-Fi difficult to use, with registration and pay schemes – drains time, battery power and more importantly enthusiasm. Anecdotally, a mobile operator recently mentioned to us that even a simple “terms and conditions” pop-up on their network causes a 50 percent drop-off rate, with users abandoning the activity they were planning on engaging in based on inconvenience.  And to the contrary, at a recent professional football game, another operator offered an unadvertised version of Wi-Fi which then generated more than a terabyte of traffic – simply because it was free and easy-to-use.

Abuse the user’s trust

Trying to knowingly or unknowingly capture private data about people, via their gadgets, always backfires in the long run. How happy and willing would you be to regularly frequent a Wi-Fi network if you knew you were going to be bombarded with myriad privacy-invading apps? Not so much.

The popularity of Groupon and other discount sites, however, confirms that if consumers crave anything it’s deals. The challenge then is offering them without compromising security and violating privacy. To effectively balance these factors, let your customers drive your Wi-Fi service. Recognizing the difference between user information and device information is essential to establishing trust with the customer. Rather than mining personal user data, Wi-Fi and location-based services can be used to improve the user experience through their intelligence and by allowing the user to opt in only with the info they want.

Our friend Harry is now on a Las Vegas vacation and could use a little assistance finding his way around the Bellagio resorts. Wi-Fi can help Harry find the ATM machines when GPS can’t reach him indoors or offer him discounted tickets for a late-night show. By enhancing Harry’s experience through network intelligence – offering him information he wants and, crucially, none that he doesn’t – loyalty is built and trust remains intact. The less intrusive the experience, the safer the end-user feels which is critical for encouraging network usage.

Spamming them with unwanted advances

So now you’ve earned Harry’s trust, but that doesn’t mean Harry wants six different offers from you within the span of 10 minutes. That means not pushing your coupon pop-up to Harry until you see one of two things: 1) he appears to be idle, and/or 2) an opportunity to send something contextually relevant arises.

This creates instant value for loyalty and “mobile butler” apps. If you’re the CIO of an IKEA-sized venue, and you know that a quarter of a million people downloaded your loyalty app, you’re probably still ho-hum about the whole thing. Why? Because most people aren’t accustomed to opening the app of the store they’re entering.

However, what’s “intelligent” about intelligent Wi-Fi is that it can awaken the app, to trigger the “Hey Harry,  free Wi-Fi” offer. Next, help him find what he’s looking for. Again, Harry’s mobile butler: “What are you looking for, Harry?” Uh, a drafting table. “Drafting tables are on aisle 10 and there is a special today – 20 percent off.” Result: One sold drafting table. User-pulled, not vendor-pushed.

Or, consider a mobile app / intelligent network launch we did with AT&T and the Fernbank Museum of Natural History in Atlanta. When you enter, a green light flashes near the antenna icon on your phone. Selecting it returns nearby services – maps, restroom locations, guided tours and more. The café  can detect slowdowns in the mid-afternoon, based on dwell times and crowding (flow control is another proven use for intelligent Wi-Fi.) It auto-generates a trigger that pushes an offer to museum-goers – “Free hot cocoa in the cafe!” – to attract appetites, and thus sales.

Jared Headley is director, service provider mobility, for Cisco. 

Photo courtesy Richard Paul Kane/Shutterstock.com.

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It’s a speakerphone for the car

The Coda One comes with a clip so you can attach it to the visor in your car. When paired to your phone, it works like any other hands-free car solution. Being an electric hybrid, my car is pretty quiet on the road. Even so, some callers said they could easily tell I was on a speakerphone.

These are folks I’ve spoken with before over Bluetooth using the integrated wireless system in my car, which they felt offered better sound quality. Still, they’ve heard worse solutions as well. Incoming calls are announced through the Coda One and a simple button press answers calls or switches to a second call. The visor clip has a magnetic attachment because …

It’s a standalone speaker for calls and music

Remove the Coda One from the magnetic clip and you have a very portable external speaker. Sure you can still take calls with it without the clip, but it doubles as a music player. Sound isn’t what I’d call high-end; I use a Jambox at home to stream music in a room and the sound is much louder and richer.

But the Coda One output is passable for a small wireless speaker. Put another way: It offers the best sound of any hands free in-car Bluetooth speaker I’ve used. I like how it actually stands up on its own thanks to two small rubber feet, giving it a mini boombox profile. (Wikipedia’s boombox entry is here for those under 25 years of age — ah, the 1980s.)

It’s a wireless handset too. What?!?

The Coda One’s third use is my favorite. When on a call, pressing the Multi-Function Button on the device takes it out of speakerphone mode. At this point, you hold the Coda One up like a mini handset with a speaker near your ear and a microphone near your mouth. In this configuration the device is small enough that you don’t look silly talking on the phone. Heck, it’s about the length of my good old Motorola StarTAC when it was open and in use.

Why would I be excited about this? I’ve been early to the trend of phones getting bigger at the same time tablets have shrunk in size. I’ve even used a 7-inch tablet as a primary phone with VoIP for months at a time. Instead of looking the fool with a tablet alongside my head, the Coda One becomes a perfectly sized handset for larger devices.

Final thoughts

Overall, I like concept of the Coda One although I wish the sound quality in speakerphone mode were a tad better. It doesn’t have its own voice command capabilities, but can be used with one on your smartphone: Siri and Vlingo are specifically mentioned and I used it with the voice controls built into BlackBerry 10. Coda One supports multi-pairing – up to eight devices — and battery reportedly lasts for 20 hours of talk time or 40 days of standby. Supported Bluetooth 3.0 profiles include HFP, HSP, PBAP and A2DP.

The Coda One is expected to launch with a $99 price tag. Are there better hands-free speakerphones? Yes. Are there better wireless speakers? Yes.

But few can do everything the Coda One does in various places and if small tablets do become large voice-capable devices, I could easily see myself buying one of these versatile Bluetooth devices. Then I won’t look like this when having a conversation on a tablet.

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Although the merger activities may delay products, the two groups working together will help product development and adoption of WiGig technology. This will make it easier for product manufacturers to use both standard Wi-Fi and WiGig in devices and make it simple for consumer to understand the different wireless capabilities since WiGig is very different.

The technology is meant for fast transfers between devices close to each other or in the same room by using 60 GHz spectrum. Expect to see wireless computer docks, easier ways to stream content from a mobile device to a large screen and other similar use cases where WiGig can replace today’s data transfer cables.

WiGig started as a 2009 initiative with bold plans to deliver products as early as 2010, but that date came and went a while ago. And recently, the WiFi Alliance has spent much effort on the new 802.11ac standard for Wi-Fi, which uses wider channels and multiple data streams to boost wireless speeds and range well beyond 802.11n products. But this market is just getting started, so 802.11ad product certifications that include WiGig functionality, originally expected for 2013, are looking like a 2014 event at this point.

According to a video interview with Dr Ali Sadri, WiGig Alliance Chair,  “Based on our existing plan we should have certification in place later this year so there’s a little slip of the programme, maybe even beginning of ‘14.”

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Stacey Higginbotham

Chip wars intensify as more gain LTE integration

Qualcomm has experienced a phenomenal run as the provider of integration applications processors and radios for smartphones this past year. The application processor is the brains for the smartphone, while the radios allow them to communicate. Qualcomm’s longstanding practice is to combine those chips onto one system on a chip to save space inside the handset, which has helped it lead the pack in terms of market share.

Now others are finally following its lead with Nvidia, which purchased radio maker Icera, and Intel, which purchased Infineon’s wireless business; both are set to release integrated chips next year. Nvidia’s Grey and Wayne chips will combine its Tegra processor and should hit devices in the second half of the year

Intel on the other hand has released an integrated modem and application processor that found its way into a handful of handsets this year, but didn’t support LTE. The chip giant plans to release an Atom-based application processor that supports the 4G standard early next year. Qualcomm is going to get some competition with good tech and competition with deep pockets as handset makers will have more chip options for the onslaught of LTE handsets expected in 2013.

Kevin Fitchard

The incredibly shrinking network

Next year networks are going to get smaller — or at least the cells within them are. The major U.S. operators led by AT&T and Sprint plan to begin their first small cell launches in 2013, paving the way for far denser networks and big increases in mobile data capacity.

Why are small cells important? Each cell in a network only has a finite amount of capacity, so if you increase the number of cells in a given area you increase the overall amount of shared bandwidth available to a carrier’s subscribers. Radio network analytics and optimization firm Actix estimates that today the typical square kilometer in a busy urban area contains five to seven macrocells, but in 2015 that same area will be augmented with a layer of 40 or more micro and picocells. Such an architecture could support 3,000 GB of traffic a day within a single square-kilometer, a 10X increase in capacity over what our networks support today.

The big cell mounted on rooftops and towers isn’t going away. Instead it will be incorporated into the heterogeneous network, allowing our smartphones and tablets to choose among many connection options and eventually to establish multiple connections simultaneously. Mobile bandwidth will become more plentiful and hopefully much cheaper. This won’t happen overnight, but we’ll see the precursors of these hetnets next year.

The resurgence of the MVNO

The independent mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) all but died in the last decade. But in 2012 the MVNO made a big comeback. Dozens of new virtual carriers emerged, but instead of focusing on a specific demographic or a media brand like the defunct Amp’d Mobile or Disney Mobile, this new breed of MVNO is targeting the industry’s traditional business models.

There are dozens of virtual operators led by Straight Talk that are now undercutting the big operators in price, but a few of them have gone further, upturning the usual minutes/bucket of megabytes plans. Republic Wireless is tapping into public, readily available Wi-Fi to offer unlimited data and voice plans at sub-$40 rates. Ting is offering what amounts to metered pricing, charging customers only for what they use. Karma and FreedomPop are using social networking principles to distribute 4G bandwidth.

Most of these MVNOs are just getting off the ground and many of them may get culled by the market. But 2013 could be the year for those MVNOs to flourish. There’s growing discontent in the market with the major carriers’ pricing models, sending consumers searching for alternatives. But there’s also greater willingness among carriers to work with MVNOs. They’re lifting many of the old restrictions such as limited access to networks and device that previously kept MVNOs from thriving.

Kevin Tofel

Wi-Fi gets better both in and out of the home

As carriers continue moving towards tiered and shared mobile broadband data plans, look for reliance on Wi-Fi networks to continue to increase. The one-time barrier of hotspot availability has diminished, but hasn’t solved a key problem: seamless connection to Wi-Fi networks. That’s where Passpoint and Hotspot 2.0 initiatives come into play. These services add new capabilities to Wi-Fi devices, primarily allowing certified products to automatically sign in and use a Wi-Fi network.

Asus 80211ac router

That’s just the first step, however; the idea is that smartphones, tablets and laptops will roam from one Wi-Fi hotspot to another without any user intervention. Not only will that help consumers and enterprise workers out in the field, but it also benefits cellular operators, making it even easier to offload data traffic from 3G and 4G networks to hotspots.

Home Wi-Fi use will improve as well thanks to the new 802.11ac standard, which boosts throughput over today’s 802.11n networks. Supporting up to eight antennas and wider bandwidth on a 5 GHz channel, 802.11ac devices deliver a wider coverage range with throughput speeds over a gigabit per second. Although the standard is still in draft form, expect to see some mobile devices support early versions of 802.11ac mainly for traditional networking activities and video sharing in the home.

Digital assistance and contextual smarts improve on smartphones… and beyond.

Siri, Google Now and various third-party assistants set the stage for contextual software in smartphones, but there’s more work to be done. Expect to see these and other related services mature by taking advantage of more mobile device sensors combined with deeper access to personal information such as schedules, contacts, locations, and your historical smartphone usage. More apps will arrive to help our handsets become more effective, and the successful apps will be eyed by platform vendors for integration at the operating system level.

This coming year will also see such contextual services appear in other objects. Think televisions that learn your viewing habits and automatically record shows you may be interested in, for example. How about a smart desk chair sets your online IM status to “available” thanks to a pressure sensor that “sees” when you’re sitting at your desk and back to “away” when you leave?

The possibilities are limitless thanks to the advances in apps and small hardware pioneered by smartphones. Helping to drive this movement are the hacker and tinkerer communities. These have long created their own solutions, but will drive change this year through open-source hardware and software projects such as Arduino.

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Here’s what we found: While the price of these other technology-driven products and services has continued to fall over the last few years—personal computer prices have dropped over 44 percent in five years—the prices for wireline broadband have mostly been flat.

So why haven’t wireline broadband prices budged in recent years? The high, fixed costs of broadband means that there hasn’t been a big rise in competition among providers, according to Scott Wallsten, Vice President for Research and Senior Fellow at Technology Policy Institute. Indeed, most Americans don’t have more than two options when it comes to wireline broadband providers. (See how many your area has here. )

In the meantime, people who don’t have broadband want it badly and the for those who do have it, it’s become increasingly indispensable. The result is that there hasn’t been much downward pressure on prices.

The last few months did see a very slight drop  in the price of broadband. It’s unclear whether that’s just a temporary blip or beginning to use the high-speed wireless network LTE as a substitute for wireline broadband. (Of course, if it’s the latter and that trend continues, that could drive down the prices for broadband.) ”A big, and open, question is whether LTE will begin to compete on the margins with wireline broadband,” says Wallsten.

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Currently 119 million people that live in the U.S. don’t have broadband connections (for many reasons, including not wanting it or not being able to afford it) while 19 million don’t even have the option to get it. Our rate of broadband adoption (62 percent) lags behind countries such as South Korea, the U.K.,and Germany, according this year’s Federal Communication Commission report. (We’re closer to the penetration rates to Japan, Finland, and Canada.) These numbers are not likely to change soon, given that broadband growth is slowing and providers are moving away from wireline infrastructure.

Pricewise, we’re not in the top 10 in any speed tier, and in the in the highest tier — 15-25 Mbps — we’re 26th out of 32 countries. Hong Kong and Denmark both have cheaper internet — and faster average broadband speeds.

In this infographic, we highlight some key facts on broadband in the U.S. We obtained the data from the FCC, the National Broadband Map and Akamai.

ADOPTION

196.7 million (62%)

Americans who have broadband

15th

rank in wired broadband adoption per capita

Green denotes areas with at least two wireline broadband providers. Click to see how well your area is covered by both wireline and wireless broadband providers. Source: National Broadband Map.

SPEED

6.6 Mbps

average U.S. broadband speed

9th

U.S. broadband speed rank worldwide

The average internet speed worldwide is 3.0 mbps. While the U.S. beats the average, it doesn’t stand out among other developed nations. Source: Akamai

1Gbps

speed in Kansas City, using Google Fiber

Google Fiber has by far the fastest speeds in America. Click to test your speed. Source: Google/Ookla

COSTS

$249

amount telcoms invest in U.S. broadband, per person annually

$155

worldwide broadband investment, per person per year, by OECD countries

$528

what Americans on average pay for a standalone broadband subscription every year (5-15 mbps)

21st

rank out of 33 countries in  price for that speed tier 

This map shows which broadband technologies serve different parts of the U.S. Click to see what type of infrastructure your hometown has. Source: National Broadband Map

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He believes that increased speed—both of the mobile broadband and the software itself— not only improves the user experience but also makes people want to use the product more. In the case of Instagram, it makes users want to take and share more photos. “We’re getting to a point where we’re understanding how to allow people to produce more content every single day,” Systrom said.

While wireless broadband and LTE are demonstrating increasingly faster speeds, for now app makers are having to compensate on the back end. Instagram moves its process along by uploading photos in the background before while users caption them.

“If you simply cut the [waiting] time in half, if you shave off a second from that time, you actually get increased usage,” he said. “Because you’re not sitting at the bus stop waiting for something to load. You can actually reliably decide to open it and have your content ready,” he said.

“When you’re ready, it’s ready.”

Check out the rest of our RoadMap 2012 coverage here, and the full video of Systrom’s talk is available here.

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The breakthrough that helped this antenna shrink in size was the filling of the antenna slot with a polymer instead of regular old air. The press release detailing the new antenna says it is ready for integration with active circuits and that the resulting antenna is 70 percent smaller and is almost two-thirds cheaper than a conventional cavity-backed slot antenna inside devices. Combine the new antenna with other millimeter-wave capable equipment and the IME researchers believe it would support speeds of up to 20 gigabits per second. At such high frequencies however, you’re looking at a wireless technology that won’t travel very far or through walls.

However, companies such as Samsung are researching the idea of using millimeter wave networks to boost wireless speeds, especially as spectrum at the lower frequency bands becomes more crowded. And while, it may seem ridiculous to imagine building out real networks in the upper gigahertz bands, our demands for mobile broadband seem infinite at the right capacity and price.

Thus research into better antennas may strike many as esoteric, but it’s essential so we can continue to take advantage of the airwaves around us for data transmissions. For example, this summer Intellectual Ventures spun out a new materials company called Kymeta that’s building a better antenna, while earlier this year Ethertronics said it had developed a new, flexible antenna that could adapt to the conditions around it.

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The FCC is halting the ability of circuit providers to raise their prices while the regulatory agency gathers data on how the prices are set and how those prices affect competitors and rural carriers. The FCC plans to issue a mandatory data request in the next month or two, but that in itself is a long process requiring approvals and comment periods that mean the FCC won’t even have a conclusion on whether or not it needs to reform special access until next year.

The issue is esoteric, and is a long time coming given the FCC began its look at the problem in 2009, but it does indirectly affect consumers. Sprint and T-Mobile both pay AT&T and Verizon a lot of money to buy access to those backhaul circuits so they can keep their network running. This means even when T-Mobile and Sprint are doing well, a portion of their proceeds ends up feeding Verizon and AT&T. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski estimates that special access charges are roughly $12 billion a year industry, which isn’t chump change.

As one might expect Verizon isn’t terribly thrilled about the decision. It issued a statement that said:

“While today’s Order acknowledges that the current rules fail to capture the full extent of existing competition, the FCC, before taking any action, should have collected the data it repeatedly has said it needs to evaluate the marketplace. There are many providers – cable companies and CLECs – that compete vigorously with special access. Given this intense competition, any efforts to impose new pricing regulation are unjustified and will depress investment in these networks so critical to our economy.”

Meanwhile, Sprint is celebratory:

“We applaud the Commission for addressing this aspect of the failed special access market, an important step at a time when the American economy needs it most….The ILECs’ unchallenged control of these high-capacity broadband lines continues to harm U.S. businesses and consumers to the tune of at least $10 billion annually in over-charges — with profit margins over 100% to these monopoly service providers every year that this failed marketplace is allowed to persist.”

But the most realistic assessment came from a more independent source, the analyst firm Stifel Nicolaus, which issued a note this morning that read:

We continue to doubt the FCC action will have much impact near term, as it won’t affect existing deregulation and we’re not aware of any pending or expected telco petitions for relief. We nevertheless believe the proceeding, on balance, creates opportunities for wireless competitors and CLECs and risks for telcos — most notably the Bells — which collect $12-18 billion a year in special-access revenue according to the FCC.

Regardless, any relief for Sprint and others may be temporary since this is an election year, and a Republican-led FCC will likely let the deregulation continue without the data collection. So competitive local exchange carriers and wireless firms that aren’t associated with the Baby Bells can party now, bite their nails during November and then deal with the uncertain aftermath.

Tower Image courtesy of Flickr user Nikhil Verma

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Elecom is showing off the device, says Akihabara News, which folds up and comes with a carry case. When unfolded, an NFC-equipped phone fits in the middle of the split keys and communicates wirelessly with the keys at a frequency of 13.56MHz. There’s no Bluetooth or other wireless technology used here; NFC is used to initiate the connection and to transfer the keystroke data.

Since NFC is a short-range, low-power wireless technology, the keyboard only works when a phone is within 10 millimeters of it. Elecom says the keyboard battery should last six months and the device supports Android only for now. While the keyboard isn’t likely suited for full-time typing, it looks like it would work well for occasional typing on an Android phone with NFC. The fact that there are no cables makes it attractive as well: Just put your phone or tablet on the keyboard and start typing.

Elecom says the keyboard is shipping soon in Japan only for 18,690 Yen, which works out to a whopping $238.75 U.S. Maybe I’ll stick with the on-screen keyboard instead.

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