Technology

Why Wi-Fi Offload

Internet traffic has grown exponentially every year and will increase further in the year 2022. The volume of traffic growth is such that, mobile and offload from mobile devices together account for 48 percent of total IP traffic by 2022 which is testimony to the enormous growth and influence of mobile devices and lifestyles in overall traffic. Wi-Fi traffic coming from both mobile devices and Wi-Fi-only devices is expected to account for more than half, at 51 percent of total IP traffic by 2022, while in 2017, was only 43 percent. In 2017, wired devices dominated the share of IP traffic and the majority of that traffic will come from wireless. As a result, cellular networks have become extremely congested. Nearly three-fifths of traffic (59 percent) will be offloaded from cellular networks (over Wi-Fi) by 2022.

This unprecedented growth of data traffic can be attributed to various factors, such as: the proliferation of high-end devices, such as smart-phones, tablets, laptops, handheld gaming consoles, etc. that can multiply traffic, the increase in mobile network connection speeds and the growth in mobile video content, which increases the average traffic per device. Mobile video traffic already accounts for more than 50% of all mobile data traffic and continues to grow. In addition, mobile broadband service pricing and speeds are now getting closer to fixed broadband, further contributing to the unprecedented growth in data traffic.

Mobile data offloading or just data offloading is the application of complementary network technologies and inventive methods to convey data originally addressed to the mobile/cellular network for decongestion and hence better use of available network capacity. The motivation is to achieve Quality-of-Service (QOS) for customers, thereby reducing capacity and reducing congestion and impact on the mobile network. More and more operators from all sectors are now opting for an offload solution.

Today’s devices include smart-phones, laptops as well as a tablet. Laptops or most of today’s mobile devices and especially smart phones are often built with wide area broadband capability. This is another reason for people to go very hungry and fast for ever-increasing bandwidth, so all customers get a quick satisfying way due to the rise of mobile and wide area coverage. So, because of devices that have integrated Wi-Fi are getting great speeds of up to 1.5Gbps on Wi-Fi networks, which are better suited for indoor 3G/4G environments, mobile operators need to be able to provide good end-user experience over Wi-Fi.

Also, as device manufacturers are now designing more and more new types of devices as “Wi-Fi”, operators can reduce churn and retain customers by offering Wi-Fi offload from 3G/4G networks to Wi-Fi networks adds more capacity for mobile operators in a cheap and flexible way. This fact has already been proven in the deployment of Wi-Fi offload networks, which operators in developed countries have been steadily building in universities, areas with heavy use of mobile broadband, and has brought down costs with reduced churn and improved user experience.

Alternative offload solutions, which consider bypassing only the packet core gateways of the mobile core, will only reduce the load on those nodes but will not offload the entire network which includes the radio access network (RAN). FEMTO cells can be used as a means to build a 3G radio network cost-effectively. However, a FEMTO-cell will not offer the possibility to quickly increase the footprint through partners as Wi-Fi does.

Also, most Wi-Fi-enabled devices try to join a Wi-Fi network first if one is available. Some applications are only accessible through Wi-Fi. No wonder why carrier Wi-Fi is quickly gaining interest, and Wi-Fi offload is fast becoming a top priority of mobile operators around the world.

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