Tag Archives: WiFi Calling

WiFi Calling

In an interesting lawsuit, VoIP-Pal, a patent holding company brought suit against AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, and Deutsche Telekom for now allow customers an option to use WiFi calling and WiFi texting.

Of course, anybody with a smartphone can make a WiFi call across their phone’s data connection, and the lawsuit is really a complaint that the cellular companies are forcing customers to pay for a traditional voice and texting plan when customers only want to buy a bare broadband connection.

The company has filed multiple suits, including a class-action lawsuit that alleges that the big carriers are squelching a nascent WiFi calling industry. That suit seeks to represent 373 million smartphone customers and is asking for almost $269 billion for customers to be delivered in the form of lower bills.

The argument being made in the current lawsuit is that WiFi calling is technologically independent from cellular voice service and that these giant carriers are presenting WiFi calling as a feature rather than allow it to be a standalone service option. The suit says that treating WiFi as a feature allows cellular companies to save a huge amount of costs by dumping WiFi calls to landline connections.

The final argument is that the big cell companies don’t charge anything for the WiFi feature, making it impossible for others to offer competitive alternatives.

This is an interesting lawsuit for several reasons. First, there is no denying that cellular companies reap huge benefits by dumping voice and data connections across home and business WiFi networks, which makes ISPs carry their traffic for free. Many of you might remember discussions in the industry a decade ago about how ISPs might be able to make money by offering WiFi bypass services to cellular carriers. But that idea died pretty quickly when cellphones came with a WiFi connection and customers began dumping data cellular data across their home broadband connection for free. I used to wonder why ISPs never challenged this free use of their networks. It’s clear why this is okay today when big telcos and cable companies have a cellular product that completely relies on dumping traffic to WiFi connections.

The allegation with the most legs is that cellular carriers are forcing a bundle on customers that includes data, voice, and texting. I assume that the large majority of customers want that bundle so that when they are out of range of WiFi networks they can still complete texts and voice calls. But there are probably a significant number of people who mostly use their phones at home, work, and other places with WiFi connections who would prefer to save money and unbundle the traditional cellular package.

I wonder how many people would buy a data-only cellphone? The idea that the lack of a WiFi calling option disadvantages 373 million people is pretty silly, but there may well be a few million people who would elect a data-only cellphone option – so the concept has some merit even if the claim is exaggerated.

It’s also an interesting question if regulators could mandate a data-only cellphone option. Unlike broadband that is not regulated, the FCC has full regulatory authority over cell service. I can’t imagine the FCC getting involved as the result of this lawsuit, but they might investigate the idea if enough customers were asking for a data-only cellphone. The regulatory trend in the country has been against forced bundles, and most cellphone packages are exactly that.

Wireless Trends for 2017

Wi-FiToday I look at wireless trends for 2017. While most of my clients are small landline carriers, the wireless industry has a lot of impact on every ISP these days.

New Spectrum for Rural Broadband. The FCC should release spectrum at the end of the current Incentive Auction that can be used for rural broadband. This would be a slice of spectrum that used to be occupied by UHF television stations and that is being referred to as ‘white space’ spectrum. The beauty of this spectrum for rural broadband is that it will travel significantly far from a tower and will penetrate most obstacles that stop other spectrum. This spectrum has been allotted to only a few carriers under experimental licenses and so it might be a few years until affordable gear is ready for the market – but this would be a great tool for reaching remote customers.

New WiFi. The FCC should also finally release new WiFi in the 3.5 GHz band. This bandwidth will be available through a new spectrum sharing arrangement that will make it available to carriers while giving first priority to existing government and satellite users of the spectrum. But it’s a broad swath of 150 MHz and within a few years will add to the capacity of wireless point-to-multipoint networks. If the spectrum-sharing rules being used for 3.5 GHz work well, expect to start seeing sharing with other spectrum. This would be a great change for everybody and would spectrum owners on the notice that they have to either use or share spectrum and they can’t sit on it and let it go unused.

LTE Replaces Rural Copper. This is the year when we will start to really see AT&T and Verizon tearing down rural copper networks and forcing rural customers onto 4G LTE. What will never stop amazing me is that the FCC is paying for a lot of this from the CAF II fund.

Zero Rating Will Be Big. Expect all of the cellular carriers to aggressively adopt zero-rating, which is where they will provide their own video products to customers without it counting against cellular data caps. Zero-rating is not allowed under net neutrality rules, but it’s clear that the new FCC will soon reverse those rules.

Zero-rating is a really mixed bag. It will certainly be a boon to customers who don’t mind getting locked into big company bundles – for instance, an AT&T cellular customer might be able to watch unlimited DirecTV Now (but not Netflix) on their cellphone. But zero-rating also is glaring proof that wireless data caps are all about the extra revenue and not about bandwidth issues since the wireless carriers will open up wireless data pipes wide for those willing to pay them a lot of money.

There Will Be Huge 5G Hype. Expect the wireless companies and the press to talk about nothing but 5G. We will hear all year how the technology is being tested and how it’s right on the horizon. And all of the press releases won’t make any distinction between 5G cellular and 5G indoor gigabit wireless. So the general public will end 2017 mistakenly thinking that they will soon have gigabit cellphones.

There Will Be New Wireless Choices. Expect Comcast to launch their wireless product in a few test markets this year. Charter will also be closely watching those trials. Also don’t be surprised if Sprint or T-Mobile are bought by companies wanting to get into the cellular business. A really crazy rumor I read had Verizon merging with Comcast – but honestly nothing would surprise me any more with big company mergers.

WiFi Calling from Cellphones. There will be a big short this year as more and more calls will be made from cellphones directly over WiFi networks. Google Project Fi and Republic Wireless started this trend in 2016 and many others, including the big cell providers will join the trend.