Wi-Fi Alliance publishes LTE/WiFi coexistence test plan The Wi-Fi Alliance's long-awaited – and controversial – LTE-U Coexistence Test plan has landed. The reg-walled test plan is supposed to help work out if LTE-U – the mobile carriers' plan to use unlicensed spectrum if nobody else is talking – can coexist with Wi-Fi. Carriers, already under a spectrum squeeze, are hoping they …
WiFi is bad enough without and extra COMMERCIAL exploitation.
Search "Hidden Transmitter Syndrome" to see why the idea of spectrum sharing doesn't work. WiFi already has this problem and greedy companies want to make it worse.
Is ALL spectrum above 400MHz to end up being used (badly) for Mobile? They don't even re-use their own licensed spectrum properly because base station building is based on maximising ROI for minimal investment rather than sensibly mandated coverage and capacity by regulators. More spectrum is cheaper than more base stactions
Search how cellular channel reuse works.
> Search how cellular channel reuse works.
Then read up on how LTE works and discover it has nothing to do with cellular channel reuse as all frequencies in a band are available to use by all cells in an LTE network.
I've not read the test spec yet, but have been to various industry gigs describing the aims. In a nutshell, the aim of LTE-U is a way of fairly sharing frequencies with wifi. Under vanilla wifi, if the frequency is busy, wifi will back off. Under vanilla LTE, it will greedily grab the channels - thus stick them both in the same band and LTE throttles wifi. LTE-U offers a way for them to share & co-exist and the debate up til now has been a mechanism for that fairness. Seems like these tests define what the results of that mechanism should be.
Re-Use: Where the same resource is used time and again.
Sand-bagging: Where the resource is reserved for exclusive use of one party whether it used or not.
I'm not sure what your point is, you want 400MHz+ unlicensed spectrum to be left empty so that you can use it in future for Wi-Fi?
If you are so hung up on "sensibly mandated coverage and capacity by regulators" (for cellular operators) then why aren't you crying for Wi-Fi providers to be required to provide free 300Mbps service nationally?
What is your definition of 'minimal investment'? UK MNOs will typically spend around £1Bn per year on expanding capacity and coverage. The US Operators are at a run rate of $10Bn's per annum.
There's a lot of other users in the 2.4GHz band other than Wi-Fi - for example wireless house phones which are "inactive" until someone calls, and then start using the spectrum regardless of what else is talking ... there's a lot of scientific/medical gear that uses the bands too, and of course the microwave oven ... the original reason why 2.4GHz was given away for free.
It will all end in tears.
I think the 'unlicensed' spectrum, particularly the 2.4Ghz but increasingly the 5Ghz bands, has due to the popularity of WiFi become regarded as being reserved for WFi rather than do whatever you like just so long as you don't interfere with the neighbouring bands.
Therefore I suggest what is needed is for some of the (TV) spectrum being freed up, so that it can be reserved for 4G to be made public access ie. unlicensed, so that 4G/LTE equipment such as routers can use that. Unfortunately, that would require regulators to miss out on the proceeds of spectrum auctions and the mobile operators having to better utilise the frequency bands they already have...
Otherwise, I wholly agree it is all going to end in tears, particularly as provided I keep within the use and restrictions, I can use the unlicensed bands however I see fit; a client is developing a base-station to drone communications system that is doing precisely that...
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