Can Wi-Fi Compete with Mobile? How Much?

Whether Wi-Fi can be a functional substitute for mobility networks was a subject of serious contemplation a decade and a half ago. The speculation might rise again. Cable operators in the U.S. market are cooperating to build bigger Wi-Fi networks that customers of any member cable TV company can use, out of market. 

Broadcom expects most major U.S. cable operators will have vast networks of public Wi-Fi hotspots activated in their respective subscribers’ homes in 12 to 18 months, according to Jay Kirchoff, Broadcom VP.

As a simple historical matter, hopes that municipal Wi-Fi networks really could provide a functional substitute for mobile service proved to be false. 

But the original thesis was based on an assumption that phones could use a municipal or commercial Wi-Fi network as a network substitute for mobile networks. 

It is at least possible that new lead applications and devices, especially tablets, plus a greater range of smart phones that can use a Wi-Fi connection, could create at least some new deployment scenarios.

Tablets, unlike mobile phones, mostly are used in "untethered" mode, not "mobile" mode. So it is at least possible that untethered applications and device usage modes could create a different and viable role for "public" Wi-Fi networks. 

In many ways, a new lead device, the tablet, could underpin new rationales for public Wi-Fi.