UK Spectrum Policy Forum – Sami Susiaho, BSkyB - Current and future spectrum needs for Wi-Fi

Current and future spectrum needs for WiFiSami Susiaho

Head of Edge Technologies

The Cloud networks - a BSkyB company

Storm Surfers

The Cloud networks is the Wi-Fi arm of British Sky Broadcasting

• 100 people with sole focus in Wi-Fi

• Headquarters in the UK, presence in a dozen European countries

• 21,000 installed venues in the UK

• 8 million people pass through a Cloud hotspot every day

• 60 million sessions a month

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Wi-Fi in high streets has very different needs from home or corporate environments

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Evolution of our Wi-Fi network proposition

Dots on a map Offload Service providing

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Spectrum scarcity

• Using two licence free frequencies on the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz band effectively becomes a challenge.

• Wider and wider bands, false triggers for the radar avoidance mechanisms, retries for sending packets.

• While the licence free spectrum is very efficiently used compared to licenced, it doesn’t mean it can be used efficiently.

Wireless usage tests at Victoria station, September 2014Sky, Ofcom and 7Signal collaboration

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UNII-1

UNII-2 NA UNII-2

extendedUNII-

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Lig

ht

lic

ence

5.15 5.25 5.35 5.47 5.725 5.85

Licence free 5 GHz frequency

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UNII band usage in Wi-Fi started to grow in 2013

Most of the sessions are on 5 GHz

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2.4 GHz

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65 2.4

GHz5 GHz

2/3 of the data is delivered via 5 GHz

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Future in Wi-Fi

Carrier grade Wi-Fi

definition

Passpoint roll-out

MultibandMulti-User

High efficiency

Wi-Fi as extension to cellular

2014

2015

2016

2017

Wi-Fi is becoming an extension to cellular networks. Starting with defining the Carrier Grade Wi-Fi term, the development of Wi-Fi standard will bring the needed capabilities when considering Wi-Fi as an extension to Cellular networks

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802.11u network discovery and

selection

WPA2 enterprise strong

authentication and security

Roaming accounting, billing

and settlement

Something new, something old, something borrowed

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When you go to France, your device connects to

the French cellular network automatically. You didn’t have to do anything. That’s what

Passpoint will do for Wi-Fi

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ABC – Always Best Connected

• Users want to be ‘always best connected’. The operators don’t want devices to connect to a “dead hotspot” any more than the users

• To ensure the network provides a good experience, the ability to connect to the network, has to be gated. This is called “admission control” in the WFA workgroups and standards

• The trick, commercially, is to enable the capacity to be used as close to 100% as possible, without ever going over

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Thank you!

Questions?