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Will Wi-Fi Make 5G LTE Irrelevant?

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thiggins

Mr. Easy
Staff member
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Wi-Fi may have a better shot than 5G LTE in the race to be the next mobile technology.

Read on SmallNetBuilder
 

LTE is more than just a radio interface (the eUTRAN) - it's an architecture, which has always included WiFi (and CDMA/EVDO) as part of the Evolved Packet Core. Same for Wimax/802.16...

While the e-UTRAN was technically very strong, it was the Evolved Packet Core (EPC) that won the race...

"5G" is a marketing term, but where we're at - the 3GPP LTE-EPC is not just pushing higher speeds, it's expanding into things like the IoT arena (NB-IOT for one), and improved interconnectivity across different bearers...

It's a very interesting time for the telco's especially, as the EPC specs define interfaces, but they don't define implementation - and we see ATT and Verizon (along with others) migrating their cores into something more cloudlike similar to Google, Amazon, and Microsoft...
 
With LTE, you pretty much get a decent AND guarantee connection. So far WiFi feels like a best effort ( Whether it is designed like that or not )
Logging in still sucks, some AP are stuck with ADSL backbone. And in high populated area it is hugely congested and UX mostly sucks.

I am waiting to see if LTE-U, LAA, or MuLTEFire will be better.
 
Good article. One does get the impression that all of it is "throwing at the wall, and see what sticks"? Not the most efficient way to building a nationwide "last mile".
 

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