Page 29 - Mobile World Daily - Day 2

DEVICESCAPE | FEATURED INTERVIEW

“In the last few months at Devicescape we have had just is only the beginning. Until eighteen months 450MB/month. That translates to both better
as many enquiries from newcomers as from traditional ago, we were primarily in the U.S. Now we are customer experience and potential savings on
mobile operators... These new players ... are starting with becoming established in Europe, where we are infrastructure costs.
a clean slate, rethinking the concept of wireless service.” expanding both the reach of our virtual
network and our customer base. We were MWD: WHAT PLACE WILL WI-FI PLAY
MWD: OPERATORS SPEND BILLIONS provides a more precise picture of the excited to announce Virgin Media as a UK IN THE OPERATOR'S ECOSYSTEM AS
IN SPECTRUM AUCTIONS TO ENSURE performance and reliability of a network, and, customer last year, and we’re hoping to be able THE INDUSTRY MOVES IN THE
CONTROL OVER THEIR NETWORKS therefore, a customer's quality of experience, to announce more top- tier customers as we FUTURE TOWARDS 5G?
AND THE QOS THEY OFFER THEIR than if we measured congestion only at the complete the many trials presently underway.
CUSTOMERS. IN CONTRAST network level. DF: 5G still feels some distance away,
DEVICESCAPE USES PUBLICLY As this space evolves rapidly, we foresee whereas enormous, important changes are
ACCESSIBLE WI-FI HOTSPOTS. HOW Obviously security is an important feature for our network growing five- or ten-fold in the taking place in user behaviour, and in the
DO YOU ENSURE QUALITY OF operators, and we do multiple things to improve next five years across several geographies. industry, right now. Operators need to meet
SERVICE AND SECURITY? it across public Wi-Fi. Most recently we the demands being made on mobile data
announced Safetynet Curator, which is an MWD: YOU PUBLISHED A networks by their customers. But at the same
DF: We are extremely careful when selecting automated Virtual Private Network (VPN) 'MANIFESTO' DOCUMENT AHEAD OF time as operators are striving to provide more
the Wi-Fi networks we use. We monitor connection that encrypts all IP traffic to and from THE SHOW. WHAT WAS THE bandwidth, they are struggling to differentiate
hundreds of millions of Wi-Fi hotspots for the user’s device when accessing the Internet. THINKING BEHIND THAT? and facing price wars as companies like
availability, quality, and security in real time, and Google come into the space. The problems of
only 10% of those we monitor make the grade MWD: HOW EXTENSIVE IS DF: The manifesto, called Connectivity First, demand are all about the here and now, and
for inclusion in what we call our Curated Virtual DEVICESCAPE'S CURATED VIRTUAL is our way of setting out why and how Wi-Fi will play an increasingly important role
Network (CVN) of amenity Wi-Fi locations. We NETWORK? WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS operators must put connectivity ahead of in meeting those requirements.
then use sophisticated policy controls to FOR GROWTH IN COVERAGE technology. Instead of taking a black and white
connect users to CVN locations, based on WORLDWIDE? approach to the world, where the operator's “The clear majority of
parameters set by the operator that reflect cellular network is on one side and Wi-Fi First players in this market will
whichever of the business needs we discussed DF: The network is crowd-sourced, so it and even Wi-Fi only networks are on the other, start to think of the service
earlier that they are looking to address. grows fast wherever we have devices operators should focus on providing the best they provide in terms of
deployed, depending on the availability of service possible to the end user. If that means connectivity first, and
We also measure quality of experience at amenity Wi-Fi in each region. Currently we using amenity Wi-Fi to provide indoor underlying technology
the device level, across LTE and Wi-Fi. This have a network of 20 million hotspots, but this coverage, then that is what they should do. second.”

The figures speak for themselves. Before
operators adopt our service, public Wi-Fi
typically accounts for 0 – 2% of a user’s
smartphone data consumption. After
deployment, this rises ten-fold, which means
that public Wi-Fi usage typically leaps from
40 – 50MB/month for an average user to

MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS DAILY 2015 | www.mobileworldcongress.com Tuesday 3rd March PAGE 29