Progress in automatic use of Cellular and Wi-Fi

June 16, 2013 at 8:59 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment
Tags: international roaming, iPhone, key lime pie, Mobile Internet profitability, Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Data Offload, Wi-Fi Roaming

The greatly-needed ability to seamlessly use Wi-Fi (when available) from your smartphone or tablet took a big step forward to reality this week when Apple announced that they will support the Wi-Fi Hostpot 2.0 standard in iOS 7. What does that mean? Apple devices updated to iOS 7 will allow your mobile Service Provider to let your device securely use selected Wi-Fi hotspots, which can mean lower costs and higher throughput for you.

Hotspot 2.0 delivers the critical features that Service Providers and their Subscribers want:

• Automatic (no user action required, transparent operation)
• Secure (user data is safe, as is your subscriber identity)
• Interoperable (works with existing 3G/4G cellular networks)

Mobile Operators have been working hard to enable their subscribers to “roam” onto Wi-Fi when available, to offload the cellular network (reducing costs). The standard that they have developed is called Wi-Fi Hotspot 2.0 (kinda rolls off your tongue, doesn’t it?). Like any new service, to deliver it you need support of devices as well as the network. Since nearly all smartphones and tablets are delivered by Apple (iOS) and Google (Android), we must have those vendors support the standard. Now Apple will deliver in the Fall of 2013 with iOS 7, and we expect the next version of Android, Key Lime Pie, will similarly support the standard by YE2013.

With this support, we can expect Operators to start to deliver seamless roaming using Wi-Fi in-country and internationally, which can bring big benefits to you.