The Telecom Infra Project (TIP) has launched its much-heralded OpenWiFi initiative with ambitions to assemble a global connected ecosystem allowing automated transparent roaming without log-in. There is also a secondary objective to revive heterogenous networking combining WiFi and cellular, which – as we have noted before – has proceeded in fits and starts over the past decade.
TIP had done well to generate momentum behind OpenWiFi ahead of the launch through a drip-feed of leaks from members or participants such as AT&T, Boingo, Broadcom, Cisco, CommScope, Deutsche Telekom, Facebook, Google, Intel and Samsung. All of these have firmly advocated the Wireless Broadband Alliance’s (WBA) OpenRoaming standard, which provides the foundation for OpenWiFi. That underpins the federated network structure comprising multiple individual WiFi hotspots that TIP envisages OpenWiFi will deliver.
OpenRoaming incorporates the three components necessary for this to happen – cloud federation, cybersecurity and network automation.
Cloud federation enables automatic roaming and on-boarding of users on WiFi through the WBA’s Wireless Roaming Intermediary eXchange (WRIX) standards. This is significant because it created the basis for revenue generation as well as the roaming itself, combining the technical and business processes involved in handover and onboarding. It provides the WiFi interconnection and data clearing, as well as financial approvals and exchange of WiFi location information between operators.
Cybersecurity is important as it enables secure and scalable WiFi connections to be established as simply as possible between different organizations within an OpenRoaming federation, aiming not to compromise on the protection afforded within single hotspots or domains.
Finally, network automation enables service providers to enforce policies on devices and networks.
As the WBA and TIP have indicated, the primary purpose of OpenWiFi is to improve the experience for users by connecting previously isolated hotspots into a coherent global whole. But a second motivation of rising importance is monetization, enabled by support for QoS and other experience-related policies across networks of WiFi hotspots from different providers, which is where the OpenRoaming network automation has a key role to play.
WiFi offload is part of that story, since it brings scope for adding value to both WiFi and cellular services. This comes at a time 5G threatens to invade the great indoors where WiFi has held court so far. In the early days of heterogenous networking, up to 10 years ago, cellular operators were seen as the main beneficiaries because this enabled them to offload data from their congested networks and hitch a ride over fixed broadband infrastructures. Now the boot is more on the other foot. WiFi needs cellular to fill in the large void between hotspots as users travel outside. Except in some urban areas and while travelling by train, for example, users will often be out of WiFi range.
In many cases though, mobile operators still have an interest promoting smooth WiFi on-boarding given that at present, their services are still often not available indoors, or the signal is poor. That is why OpenWiFi has engendered such enthusiasm within TIP, many of whose members have feet in both camps.
Indeed, TIP sees OpenWiFi and Open RAN as two sides of the coin for heterogeneous networking, working to facilitate open connectivity wherever users are. As Tiago Rodrigues, CEO of the WBA put it: “The WBA and TIP are both envisioning a world, hopefully not too far away, where digital connectivity becomes simpler and more streamlined for the entire ecosystem of communications service providers, OEMs, enterprises and consumers.”