A Watershed Moment for Wi-Fi?

Talk about causing a Ruckus!  It's been hard NOT to hear about SKYPE support on Apple's iPhone and (soon) RIM's Blackberry (May they say). 

The new SKYPE iPhone application ONLY allows calls over Wi-Fi and not AT&T's 3G or EDGE packet data network.This is most likely because of the undesirable load this traffic would place on the cellular network. 

Some of our ultra-geeks at Ruckus believe that the extra encapsulation might even make it more expensive to carry a SKYPE call over the 3G network (as data) than a normal native voice call.  iPhone users are required to have an unlimited data plan when they sign up. SKYPE calls are counted against that unlimited data usage and not against voice minutes.

Ironically (or not), at CTIA we recently spoke with a number of mammoth mobile carriers. One of them mentioned that "what scares us to death are these types of applications that can just bring our data network to its knees."  T-Mobile in Germany is even banning Skype for iPhone users altogether.

I just started using the SlingPlayer Mobile on my Blackberry Curve to watch TV. Over the EDGE network it's crap because it requires too much bandwidth. But over Wi-Fi it sings. Once I showed it to my spoiled kids, I couldn't get my phone back. They now use it incessantly, and I am unable to receive phone calls from some of my girlfriends like Scarlett Johansen. 

Last December, a survey by AdMob, the world's biggest mobile ad network, found that more than 40 percent of recent U.S. traffic between iPhones and the network's 6,000 ad partners passed over Wi-Fi connections, not over AT&T's cellular network.  And it's only going to get worse.

Meanwhile in not-so-nearby China where the government has recently granted 3G licenses and opened up competition among mobile and fixed line carriers, Wi-Fi is viewed as an essential tool to help:

1. offload data from 3G infrastructures and
2. to quickly and economically enable the delivery of high-speed data access while 3G base stations are being deployed.

Funny enough, after a long hate-hate affair with Wi-Fi, the technology is now being embraced by broadband carriers, MSO and mobile operates as a good way to help backhaul infrastructures cope with heavy demand from data users now and in the future.

AT&T is ramping up its network upgrades a third year in a row to accommodate the heavy data use for its 2009 iPhone launch. And according to other gossip mongers, Apple seems to be laying the groundwork to introduce high-capacity, low-power 802.11n Wi-Fi to the iPod touch, and presumably to its 3G-enabled companion, the iPhone.

The change would be a huge jump in performance for users of both devices, which now use a Wi-Fi chip that supports 802.11b/g, with a throughput of less than 25Mbps on the 2.4GHz band. But the change would almost certainly mean having to buy a new touch or iPhone with the 11n chip, and some observers say Apple also needs to upgrade the CPU to enable both handhelds to fully exploit 11n performance.
There's also seems to be other Wi-Fi-related iPhoney things in the works:

1. Using iPhones or iTouches as a remote controls for set top boxes (STB).
   They already have the capability to use the iPHone/iPod touch as a remote control for iTunes over Wi-Fi, so it makes sense to extend this to STB control
   .
2. Streaming from iPhone/iPod touch to an STB.
   This makes sense since folks have so much shareable content on the device but want to watch it on a real screen or hear it on real speakers.

The big takeaway here is that these types of applications are a huge win for Wi-Fi - validating its massive appeal as the preferred high-speed wireless connectivity option of choice. It also forces Wi-Fi to grow up.  Wi-Fi must now fundamentally change from a best effort technology of convenience into a more deterministic utility. A shared medium that uses the unlicensed spectrum, Wi-Fi has traditionally sucked for doing anything meaningful.  But that's changing and changing fast as Wi-Fi quickly become the defacto choice for client network access.

Comments

[Devin Akin]

Damn this was a funny blog! That comment about Scarlett Johansson caused me to erupt into uncontrollable laughter that in-turn caused my miniature wiener dogs to start barking incessantly. I don't know if "iPhoney" was a typo or not, but that cracked me up.

This is the best statement ever:

"Wi-Fi must now fundamentally change from a best effort technology of convenience into a more deterministic utility."

Amen to that. Excellent post.