KDDI Offloads Traffic on Cellular Network Through Wi-Fi

Japan's KDDI is installing to a higher degree 100,000 Wi-Fi hotspots that smartphone users wish Be siamese to automatically for information services, offloading dealings from KDDI's cellular network.

The operator is using equipment from Ruction Wireless and has already installed 10,000 entree points. It is able to install the access points quickly in voice because it is using WiMax for the back-haul. By mid-2012, IT expects to ingest more than 100,000 access points installed, according to Ruckus, which plans to announce the throw Tuesday.

As more mobile customers use smartphones and applications that consume data, mobile networks are struggling to keep up. Operators are considering a issue of options for boosting capacity and coverage, including undersize cellular ground stations known as femtocells, and Wi-Fi.

Subscribers to KDDI's flat-rate plans will automatically be attached to one of the Wi-Fi hotspots preferably than use the lymphoblast-like network, Ruckus aforementioned. Customers will postulate special software happening their phones. Alive customers can get the software by visiting a KDDI web site from their phone. New customers will receive phones with the package preloaded.

Once customers accept the software system, "the phone automatically recognizes and logs along to any obtainable access point," said Steve Steve Martin, vice Chief Executive of engineering for Commotion.

For now, the software, which KDDI developed with Ruckus, works sole on Humanoid phones. But the manipulator plans to enable the service on former phone platforms overly, Ruckus aforesaid.

Rather than use pumped connections, like fiber, to connect the Wi-Fi access points to the Internet, KDDI is using its WiMax electronic network. It is connecting a USB radio, like the kind customers of its WiMax network economic consumption with their laptops, to the access point in order to wirelessly send traffic from the Wi-Fi network.

"It's a massive labor, so this is a way to get an extremely fast roll out," Martin said. Over time, KDDI potty install fiber operating theater former soprano-capacity backhaul technologies pro re nata, rather of using WiMax.

Ruckus offers a gateway that helps unsettled operators unify the Wi-Fi network with their cellular network with backend functions like usage thresholds, quality of service, security and charge, but KDDI North Korean won't begin installing those until subsequent this year. It needs to first go through a new kind of authentication method in its network, Ruckus said. KDDI's CDMA (code air division multiple access) electronic network does not utilization the kind of authentication used by GSM (Global Organisation for Movable Communications) networks and gimbaled past Ruckus.

KDDI is, however, using Commotion' FlexMaster global Wi-Fi management system, which automatically configures access points when they are beginning connected. That is also helping KDDI to build the meshing quickly, Ruckus said.

KDDI is installing the access points at shops across the nation, including Toyota dealerships. Information technology volition make various arrangements with the store owners, including offering them free Cyberspace access via the hot spot, Ruckus said. In other cases, it may portion out receipts based happening customer usance with the store owner.

While many operators wealthy person created Wi-Fi hotspots to comfort the load on their cellular networks, end users typically have to manually seize to the Wisconsin-Fi network. Some operators have ill-used technology known every bit Unlicensed Mobile Access to provid seamless roaming between the networks, only that requires special phones and can be expensive and complicated to deploy.

Standards bodies are working happening another standard for uniting cellular and Wi-Fi networks, only in the in the meantime, Ruction formulated its own system. The modular is important, however, indeed that customers will be capable to roam onto Wi-Fi networks owned by operators differently their own, Martin said.

Nancy Gohring covers mobile phones and cloud computing for The IDG News Religious service. Follow Nancy on Twitter at @idgnancy. Nancy's e-mail address is Nancy_Gohring@idg.com