"Wi-Fi-Only" Works About Half the Time: Issue is What Might be Possible in Future

Historically, the big value mobile phones represented was the untethering of "calling" from places. In fact, so great was the value that mobile calling displaced less expensive place-based calling. 

More recently, the value of a BlackBerry was the ability to use email anywhere. In the latest iteration of the untethering trend, people now expect to be able to get access to the Internet anywhere they are. 


But there is another trend happening as well, namely that people find it useful to shift Internet app consumption to stationary or fixed modes, to avoid mobile Internet access charges. In other words, mobile networks are for mobility, fixed networks are for capacity. 

And since perhaps 80 percent of Internet data consumption now occurs "indoors," capacity increasingly has become the value, rather than mobility, even for mobile devices. 

That is not to say nomadic access is not important, only that essentially tethered access has become more important. Just how important remains to be seen. 

Generally, one might say that "synchronous" or "real time" communications and apps benefit from "anywhere, anytime" access. Asynchronous apps and communications (email, voice mail, blog and social posts) can tolerate some periods of disconnection, and are better suited to place-based access. 

So the issue is the degree to which growing use of asynchronous apps means access can be useful if it is "not always connected," as is the case for any user relying on devices with Wi-Fi access only, and not full mobile network access. 

At least so far, voice and messaging devices (phones) have benefited from "anywhere, anytime" access. PCs and now tablets often can provide high value even when connectable only sometimes. 

The big zone of uncertainty is whether smart phone Internet access demand will change to any great extent. The possible change is voice and messaging on the mobile network, with Internet access mostly or even exclusively based on Wi-Fi access. 

Smart phone owners know they can use Wi-Fi access inside and outside the home, and there is a financial benefit to doing so.

Mobile service providers also realize they can avoid capital investment by encouraging their users to switch their devices to Wi-Fi whenever possible, as well.

Voice-based or communication-based applications generally are not the best candidates for “Wi-Fi-only” networks. But tablets, PCs and Chromebooks are a different matter. And smart phone Internet access already is a case where mixed access is the norm. That already is allowing creation of business models based primarily on fixed access (Wi-Fi) with a mobile overlay.

34 Percent of Global Tablets will be Cellular Connected by 2017

BT, for example, appears to be thinking along those lines.

Having won 4G spectrum (2x15 MHz of FDD and 20 MHz of TDD 2.6GHz spectrum), BT suggested it would not build a retail mobile network, but use 4G to augment BT's fixed networks.

Now BT says it will launch its own retail network.

The thinking is that BT will source wholesale mobile connectivity from one of the U.K. mobile service providers to provide full mobile access, while using its own spectrum largely for fixed or location access.

That is analogous in many ways to the ways mobile service providers already blend full mobile access plus Wi-Fi access. The potentially big challenge is whether it might eventually be possible to create 

Wi-Fi only  

access services that have high value even if there is no mobile access, as once was thought feasible around the turn of the century. 

Those of you who travel outside your home country already do this: you turn off your mobile Internet access and rely only on  

Wi-Fi  

when out of country.