What is WiFi Offloading Technology and How Does it Work?

In today’s digital era, where seamless connectivity is crucial, WiFi offloading has emerged as a valuable technique to alleviate network congestion and enrich user experience. The proliferation of mobile phones and internet services has sparked an exponential rise in subscribers, reshaping user behaviors and internet usage patterns over the last-half decade. Presently, individuals are deeply engaged across various social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, alongside continuous streaming of diverse media. This surge in mobile data, driven by bandwidth-hungry apps and streaming services, contrasts starkly with the relatively static state of mobile operator network infrastructure, primarily due to its considerable expense. 

WiFi offloading, which ensures phones seamlessly connect to secure, high-capacity WiFi networks indoors, stands as an indisputably beneficial concept in the telecommunications domain. Despite initial hurdles, the barriers to its widespread adoption are rapidly dissipating. The resurgence of WiFi offloading is imminent and promises to revolutionize connectivity practices. This revival isn’t solely about addressing capacity issues; rather, it underscores the significantly improved indoor connectivity experience it facilitates.

What is WiFi Offloading?

WiFi offloading or mobile data offloading refers to the process of diverting cellular network traffic to alternative networks, typically WiFi, to reduce the burden on the cellular network infrastructure while improving connectivity. This innovative technique redirects data traffic from licensed spectrum to unlicensed spectrum, enhancing network performance, alleviating congestion, and advancing user experience. 

Why WiFi Offloading Matters?

Globally, telecom providers witness the scarcity and cost of licensed spectrum as significant challenges. Mobile data offloading or WiFi offloading, offers a compelling solution to telecom service providers by leveraging unlicensed spectrum, reducing spectrum costs and enabling the accommodation of more users within the existing infrastructure. With deployment costs significantly lower than traditional 4G base stations, WiFi offloading emerges as a cost-effective strategy for network expansion.

For years, carriers and Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) have been aware of an impending crisis. The increasing popularity and advancement of mobile devices have led to a surge in demand for higher bandwidth. It’s now crucial for network operators to adopt strategies that alleviate the strain on their primary cellular networks by utilizing their existing investments in wired and WiFi infrastructure.

However, until now, network operators have faced challenges in implementing WiFi offloading tactics without compromising the customer experience. Some obstacles include:

• Inability of iOS and Android devices to detect inactive or malfunctioning hotspots
• Time-consuming and cumbersome manual network switching
• Interruptions in internet access for consumers during network transitions
• Consumer concern regarding hotspot security

The mentioned challenges led to mass adoption of the WiFi offloading technique by the telecom service providers almost a decade ago. However, as the landscape continues to evolve, the challenges have shifted, thereby reinstating the significance of WiFi offloading once more.

Why has WiFi Offloading Become Such a Big Deal? 

If you have been in the WiFi business for long, then you might be well-versed with the fact that the concept of WiFi offloading was much-hyped a decade ago. Since then the idea of driving phones to use WiFi networks for the betterment of user experience has been living in anonymity. Now, at this point we predict this is about to change and surely for some good reasons. 

The first reason making WiFi offloading such a big deal is the bad indoor 5G coverage at a lot of places. To accomplish this the TSPs could have opted for indoor cellular solutions, but what’s the point of opting for a pricey indoor cellular solution when you have WiFi nearly everywhere indoors. And just in case if the WiFi is not available at any indoor place then it is definitely low cost to build as compared to other cellular solutions. The necessity for cellular in-building coverage has diminished significantly. Adding to that even voice calls have seamlessly transitioned to WiFi. A robust WiFi setup suffices for indoor needs across various venues, enterprises, or buildings. 

The second reason is limited spectrum and increased loads of it. Presently, there is a significant allocation of WiFi spectrum, totalling 200 MHz in the 6 GHz band, surpassing what any individual carrier might possess for 4G or 5G. Consequently, the indoor wireless capacity provided by 4G or 5G technologies falls notably short compared to the potential offered by the 6 GHz WiFi spectrum. It’s  imperative for all carriers to acknowledge this reality and strategize the integration of WiFi offload technology to enhance indoor connectivity for their subscribers. 

Advantages of WiFi Offloading

WiFi offloading offers an array of advantages, including improved network quality in areas with lack of mobile coverage. Here’s what else you can expect while leveraging WiFi offloading technique: 

• Reduced congestion on cellular networks: WiFi offloading reduces the amount of data being carried on the cellular bands, freeing bandwidth for the other users. 
• Improved network performance: With reduced load on cellular networks, it can lead to faster data transfer rates and lower latency resulting in improved network performance. 
• Cost savings: With WiFi offloading services providers get access to lower operational costs (OpEx) as WiFi is more affordable on contrary to other possible solutions.
• Increased flexibility: Operators get the flexibility to add more bandwidth wherever required, such as in metro areas, university campuses, railway stations, etc, in a very short time. 
• Cost-effective solution for mobile data users: Offloading data to Wi-Fi can be a cost-effective alternative compared to using cellular data, especially for users with limited mobile data plans.
• Improved battery life of the devices: WiFi connectivity consumes less power than cellular network connectivity, resulting in extended battery life for mobile devices.
• Enhanced user experience: Offloading enables smooth and uninterrupted data transfer when transitioning between cellular and Wi-Fi networks, ensuring a seamless user experience.

How WiFi Offloading Works?

The working principle of WiFi offloading involves three key components including detection of offloading opportunities, decision making and transfer of data from the cellular network to WiFi networking. 

Here is how it works:

Mobile devices continuously scan for available networks and identify WiFi signals offering adequate quality for offloading. As per the preset policies and user configurations, the devices determine whether to shift data to detected WiFi networks. Now, as soon as the device selects the suitable WiFi network, it smoothly transfers data, rerouting it through WiFi networks rather than cellular ones. 

iobyHFCL’s End-to-End WiFi Offloading Solutions

The first thing to understand is that mobile service providers offer their services via licensed spectrum, which is very scarce and expensive. Typically, it’s one of the biggest CAPEX for telecoms service providers (TSPs), especially in a country like India where the spectrum costs are high. Mobile Data Offload (MDO), or WiFi offloading, offers the flexibility to the TSPs to move traffic from licensed to unlicensed spectrum, and since unlicensed spectrum is already free around the world, TSPs save on spectrum costs and are able to accommodate more customers and users in the same licensed spectrum. In addition, the cost of deploying a WiFi hotspot is a fraction of deploying a 4G base station (or eNodeB) – in fact, it costs much less than even deploying a small cell or a femtocell. Essentially, the savings that TSPs enjoy are two-fold – spectrum costs and deployment costs.

What iobyHFCL does for TSPs is that we provide a comprehensive end-to-end WiFi offloading solution, which includes seamless integration with various industry-standard mobile cores. The solution that we offer to TSPs for serving WiFi offloading applications typically includes our Cloud Network Management System (cNMS – combining functionality of both controller and EMS) and our indoor and outdoor Access Points (Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6). Our WiFi offloading solutions are vendor-agnostic, and can integrate with anyone in the world, giving us the flexibility to offer this in a much more scalable way. Our WiFi APs can be easily controlled and managed by our highly scalable cloud network management system for effortlessly managing the entire Wi-Fi network. Our cNMS provides centralized control for the TSPs for their all configuration and management needs, bulk upgrades, network diagnostics tools for monitoring and troubleshooting remotely to reduce network maintenance costs. Finally, our solution comes with built-in functionalities including automatic transmit power control (ATPC), load balancing, band steering, and automatic channel selection (ACS), all of which work in conjunction to ensure that the entire unlicensed spectrum is utilized judiciously and the entire network works at its most optimum level.

Future Trends in WiFi Offloading

The horizon for WiFi offloading appears promising, propelled by technological strides and emerging trends: 

• 5G and Offloading: With the widespread adoption of 5G networks, their integration with WiFi offloading methods will rise, ensuring smoother connectivity and optimized data transfer. 
• Internet of Things (IoT): Given the reliance of IoT devices on data connectivity, there’s a heightened need for efficient WiFi offloading techniques for managing the escalating network traffic effectively. 

Conclusion

WiFi offloading offers an optimal solution to combat network congestion and elevate user experience to the next level. Counting on WiFi networks for offloading data from cellular networks yields advantages such as reduced network congestion, enhanced network performance, extended battery life of devices. However, security concerns and seamless transitions between networks still need to be addressed. With advancements in 5G, and IoT. WiFi offloading is positioned to assume a more significant role in managing network traffic and delivering seamless connectivity in future. By implementing WiFi offloading strategies and staying attuned to emerging trends, network operators, service providers, and users can optimize data usage while experiencing superior digital experience.