30-01-2013, 11:48 AM
WIRELESS INTERNET ACCESS: 3G VS .Wifi?
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ABSTRACT:
This paper compares and contrasts two technologies for delivering broadband
wireless Internet access services:”3G” VS.”WiFi”. The former, 3G, refers to the
collection of third generation mobile technologies that are designed to allow mobile
operators to offer integrated data and voice services over mobile networks .The latter,
WiFi, refers to the 802.11b wireless Ethernet standard that was designed to support
wireless LANs. Although the two technologies reflect fundamentally different service,
industry and architectural design goals, origins and philosophies, each has recently
attracted a lot of attention as candidates for the dominant platform for providing
broadband wireless access to the Internet. It remains an open question as to the extent to
which these two technologies are in competition or, perhaps, may be complementary. If
they are viewed as in competition, then the triumph of one at the expense of the other
would be likely to have profound implications for the evolution of the wireless internet
and structure of the service provider industry.
INTRODUCTION:
The two most important phenomena impacting telecommunications over the past
decade have been explosive parallel growth of both the internet and mobile telephone
services. The internet brought the benefits of data communications to the masses with
email, the web, and ecommerce; while mobile service has enabled “follow-me
anywhere/always on” telephony. The internet helped accelerate the trend from voicecentric
to data-centric networking. Data already exceeds voice traffic and the data share
continues to grow. Now these two worlds are converging. This convergence offers the
benefits of new interactive multimedia services coupled to the flexibility and mobility of
wireless. To realize the full potential of this convergence, however, we need broadband
access connections.
Here we compare and contrast two technologies that are likely to play important
roles: Third Generation mobile (“3G”) and Wireless Local Area Networks (“WLAN”) .
The former represents a natural evolution and extension of the business models of
existing mobile providers. In contrast, the WiFi approach would leverage the large
installed base of WLAN infrastructure already in place.
3G:
3G is a technology for mobile service providers. Mobile services are provided by
service providers that own and operate their own wireless networks and sell mobile
services to and –users. Mobile service providers use licensed spectrum to provide
wireless telephone coverage over some relatively large contiguous geographic service
area. Today it may include the entire country. From a user’s perspective, the key feature
of mobile service is that it offers ubiquitous and continuous coverage. To support the
service, mobile operators maintain a network of interconnected and overlapping mobile base stations that hand-off customers as those customers move among adjacent cells.
Each mobile base station may support user’s upto several kilometers away. The cell
towers are connected to each other by a backhaul network that also provides
interconnection to the wire line Public Switched Telecommunications Network (PSTN)
and other services. The mobile system operator owns the end-to-end network from the
base stations to the backhaul networks to the point of interconnection to the PSTN. Third
Generations (3G) mobile technologies will support higher bandwidth digital
communications. To expand the range and capability of data services that can be
supported by digital mobile systems, service providers will have to upgrade their
networks to one of the 3G technologies which can support data rates of from 384Kbps up
to 2Mbps.
WiFi
WiFi is the popular name for the wireless Ethernet 802.11b standard for WLANs .
WiFi allows collections of PCs, terminals ,and other distributed computing devices to
share resources and peripherals such as printers, access servers etc. One of the most
popular LAN technologies was Ethernet
HOW ARE WiFi AND 3G SAME
From the preceding discussion, it might appear that 3G and WiFi address completely
different user needs in quiet distinct markets that do not overlap. While this was certainly
more true about earlier generations of mobile services when compared with wired LANs
or earlier versions of WLANs , it is increasingly not the case. The end- user does not care
what technology is used to support his service. What matter is that both of these
technologies are providing platforms for wireless access to the internet and other
communication services.
CONCLUSION:
This article offers a qualitative comparision of two wireless technologies that can
be viewed simultaneously as substitute and / or complimentary paths for evolving to
broad band wireless access. The two technologies are 3G , which is the preferred upgrade
path for mobile providers , and WiFi , one of the many WLAN technologies. The goal of
the analysis is to explore two divergent world views for the future of wireless access and
to speculate on the likely success and possible interactions between the two technologies
in the future. First, both technologies are likely to succeed in the market place. This
means that the wireless future will include heterogeneous access technologies. Second
we expect 3G mobile providers to integrate WiFi technology into their networks thus
expecting these two technologies to be complimentary in their successful mass market
deployment .Third, we also expect WiFi to offer competition to 3G providers because of
the lower enter costs associated with establishing WiFi networks. This may take form of
new type of service providers (e.g.,Boingo) , in end- user organized networks (e.g.,
FreeNet aggregation). The threat of such WiFi competition is beneficial to prospects for
the future of last mile competition.