Deutsche Telekom Partners with Boingo

Deutsche Telekom has enabled business users to use Boingo Wireless hotspots globally.

Boingo’s network of more than 1 million hotspots around the globe is now available to Deutsche Telekom’s business customers in more than 50 countries especially the world’s largest airports, major hotels, and shopping and city centers.

In addition to Deutsche Telekom, Boingo has similar agreements with AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, LG U+ and NTT DOCOMO.

Though virtually no legacy mobile providers would endorse an “unlicensed spectrum only” approach, still valuing licensed spectrum for the core of the network facilities, it also is true that virtually all mobile operators now recognize that Wi-Fi forms an essential part of the infrastructure.

That change also extends to emerging shared spectrum policies. Spectrum sharing is expected to rather routine, and some mobile executives now believe spectrum sharing will be “essential” for fifth generation mobile networks.

That belief is especially strong among Asia mobile operators, far less so among North American operators.

Some 26 percent of 58 global mobile operator executives say spectrum sharing  it is “essential” to 5G, while another 32 percent say it is “important.” Together, 58 percent of respondents think spectrum sharing is crucial for 5G.

A quarter of respondents think spectrum sharing is  “nice to have,” while 17 percent are negative on the concept, a study about expected 5G attributes found. The study was conducted by

Gabriel Brown Senior Analyst, Heavy Reading, with support from the Telecommunications Industry Association and Interdigital.

There are now more examples of mobile operators seeking to use shared spectrum and it appears very likely that this model will be used more extensively over time, said Brown.

LTE in the unlicensed 5GHz band (LTE-U or LTE-AAA), and the recently released 3.5GHz shared access Band 42 in the United States provide potential examples.

Asian respondents are more likely to view shared access spectrum as critical to 5G (40 percent) than Europeans (28 percent) or North Americans (13 percent).