The days when WiFi and cellular had clearly delineated functions have gone, in terms of industry discussion – the supposed battle between the two wireless technologies is a favorite recurring theme, only intensified by talk of a next generation of standards (WiFi 7 and 3GPP Releases 17 and beyond).
Certainly, the capabilities of WiFi and 4G/5G have increasingly overlapped as both technologies have expanded beyond their initial territories. WiFi was conceived as a local area network mainly for indoor and stationary or nomadic use, but has steadily, over the past 15 years and more, expanded into public and outdoor hotzones, low power IoT networks, and mobile, QoS-sensitive enterprise systems.
Meanwhile cellular technology, designed for wide area, mobile voice, mainly outdoors, has become increasingly data-centric and, through small cells, has sought to colonise indoor home and enterprise environments. And it has moved into unlicensed or shared spectrum alongside WiFi. This had little impact in 4G, since the 4G standards for shared spectrum emerged very late in the day. However, 5G-Unlicensed has been ratified now, and is eyeing the 6 GHz spectrum that many regulators are opening up for unlicensed use, as well as dynamic systems like the USA’s CBRS.
All this has brought some confusion and some overlaps of functionality and deployment. But in reality, how far has either standard moved away from its heartland? WiFi dominates the home and probably always will. It is also the incumbent in the carpeted enterprise environment, and perhaps always will be, at least if Voice over WiFi can be made more robust and truly mobile. But despite all the leaps in WiFi’s capabilities, cellular always stays ahead in environments or applications that require fast, reliable mobile hand-off, guaranteed quality of service or high quality voice.
And 5G Standalone adds a new layer of capabilities that will enable enterprise functions that have never been wireless (or even connected) before, especially in industrial settings that need very low latency, very high availability and support for demanding service level agreements. WiFi 6 has some of the same features, which will boost performance for existing WiFi users, but in scenarios where organizations are connecting wirelessly for the first time, we believe 5G retains the advantage in its features, though cellular solutions are often more expensive to deploy and run – an issue that the small cell community is addressing actively by working on simpler deployment and higher degrees of automation.
Today, we carry arguments for and against the notion that WiFi 7 will close the gap with 5G. But perhaps the most important thing to remember about 5G is that it is no longer just a radio access network. 5G Standalone, with the 5G core, is actually a multi-access network that can provide customized quality of service for different users and applications, whatever connectivity they use, and will evolve to support end-to-end, multi-network slicing.
This could finally solve the WiFi versus cellular argument by making it easy for enterprises and operators to use both in a seamless manner, rather than running two networks in parallel or awkwardly connected using existing interworking standards. Initiatives like Telecom Infra Project’s Open WiFi will also help to enable a converged network that comes at lower cost to implement, integrate and manage. But this is a scenario in which the 3GPP and its ecosystem have taken a clear lead in driving the multi-access platform and the future converged core, and in which the WiFi community will need to define its value and role, as power shifts from access to the sliceable core.