Sky on Tuesday called for more spectrum to be allocated for WiFi services, warning that increasing usage and the prospect of sharing frequencies with LTE poses a threat to the user experience.
"By 2018 we’ll be in trouble if we don’t fix this," said Sami Susiaho, head of edge technologies at Sky’s The Cloud business, during a presentation at Connected Britain. "The longer we wait, the bigger trouble we will be in."
The 5 GHz band, used around the world for high-speed WiFi access, is "riddled with rules and baggage," Susiaho explained, which limits its efficacy.
This is because regulators the world over have placed restrictions on which channels can be used in various scenarios in order to curb interference with other services, such as radar. For instance, in the European Union, some 5-GHz channels can only be used indoors while others can only be used outdoors.
"There is much, much less usable 5-GHz spectrum than people think," Susiaho said.
On top of this, the momentum behind deploying LTE in unlicensed spectrum is steadily growing, and the 5 GHz band is seen as a promising candidate.
If LTE is not a polite neighbour to WiFi, Susiaho said, then it could "have potentially disastrous consequences" for the WiFi user experience.
In addition, the clamour to provide seamless WiFi connectivity, where end users automatically hand off from cellular to WiFi networks, also poses a challenge if there is insufficient WiFi spectrum.
"You cannot lau nch seamless WiFi if you’re going to connect the customer to a bad experience," Susiaho said, adding that WiFi networks need to become capacity aware so that the end user only connects to networks that can support them.
"Otherwise, all we’re going to do is hi-jack the air interface and connect the user to a not-spot," he warned.
"We haven’t run out yet…[but] we need more spectrum."
