WiMAX was so often described as WiFi on steroids. We always took that to be performance enhanced expensively and illegally, but nonetheless performance. Now Ruckus Wireless wants us to take a step backwards and believe that WiFi can actually be WiFi on steroids, and claims that carriers can now offload even more of a cellular network to a parallel WiFi one.
Ruckus has a claim to fame here in that in the third world in India, Malaysia, Chile and Thailand, it has built networks like this and its new products are based on the experience gained there. Towerstream in the US is also customer for its new devices, but this is really a fixed WIMAX network, which is only testing Ruckus kit, and when we last looked it did not offer cellular services ‘ just broadband in about 11 major US cities.
What Ruckus seems to be saying – when it talks about its ZoneFlex porducts, an outdoor AP with smart antennas an 802.11N point-to-point bridge and a low cost CPE as well as its FlexMaster Wi-Fi management system ‘ is that it is time that cellular networks genuinely believed in WiFi as a way of beefing up their networks.
These new devices are dual mode so they use both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, they use lots of antennas for longer distance, and use beamforming, so they are directional which means that the spectrum can be re-used, which makes them higher capacity. But ask yourself ‘ do you really think that cellular operators should invest in WiFi networks instead of a healthy spread of cellular spectrum.
One trend in the 4G world is to use multiple spectrum in multiple protocols from a single stack of radios in a base station ‘ combinations of UHF, 3G and AWS and GSM spectrum rather than including WiFi. This is the future as far as we can see, in cellular and where most of cellular operator money will be spent and the offload networks such as WiFi are mostly paid lip service, where an operator owns them.
Ruckus reckons that cellular operators can reduce subscriber churn by bundling Wi-Fi, offload best effort wireless data traffic from expensive cellular networks to cheaper WiFi nets, offer value added services such as Wi-Fi wholesaling and managed enterprise wireless LANs and provide last-mile wireless broadband access where fixed line or macro-cellular based wireless service is not viable.
This makes far more sense in a network poor, 2G world where Ruckus has operated so far, instead of a spectrum aware, fully built out cellular environments.
‘Wi-Fi is the simplest, most cost effective tool for service providers to address the disparity between exponential demand for wireless capacity and the linear supply of available wireless spectrum,’ said Selina Lo, president and CEO of Ruckus Wireless. ‘We are breaking new ground with the first carrier purposed 802.11n infrastructure solutions that deliver more extensive coverage, higher capacity, greater user density and steadier performance while preserving the reliability, price-performance and ease of deployment advantages that has set us apart from conventional Wi-Fi alternatives.’