LTE & Wi-Fi: Options for

Uniting Them for a Better

User Experience
Most national governments consider the radio
spectrum a valuable national resource and
heavily regulate its commercial use.
Governments typically auction off licenses for
the right to transmit over a portion of the
spectrum, which can be very expensive.
The traditional business model for cellular
carriers is based on access to this licensed
spectrum. They license slices of spectrum from
the local regulator and sell their customers
access to it. After decades of parallel evolution
on the two sides of the Atlantic through
multiple generations of technologies, the
business has coalesced worldwide around a
single 4th generation (4G) radio technology
standard called Long Term Evolution,
commonly referred to as LTE.
However, if a wireless device promises to “play
nice,” most regulators will allow it to transmit
on a slice of spectrum set aside for that
purpose: the license-exempt, license-free or
simply unlicensed bands. Playing nice means
adhering to certain rules that will be verified
when the device is certified. The rules are
derived from basic human civility:
I will not shout too loudly—there is a
limitation on transmit power, with the
Effective Isotropic Radiated Power (EIRP)
limited to anything between 4W (36 dBm)
to 25 mW (14 dBm).
I will share the resource, not monopolize
it—these are rules about the duty cycle, the
maximum duration of transmit bursts,
minimum duration of silence after
transmission, and an obligation to “listen
before talk (LBT).”
I will yield to users who have been deemed
by society to be serving a higher need than
I have—as we would pull over to give way
to a fire engine or ambulance, unlicensed
spectrum users must move away from a
frequency if they detect equipment like
airport weather radar operating on it.
While the exact situation varies by country,
generally speaking there are three unlicensed
bands of greatest interest today when it comes to wireless
broadband:
The 2.4 GHz band (λ ≈ 12 cm) has 83 MHz between
2.400 and 2.483 GHz. This band is almost
uniformly available worldwide and is heavily used
by consumer devices.
The 5 GHz band (λ ≈ 5½ cm) has 775 MHz between
5.150 and 5.925 GHz. This band is gaining
popularity in consumer devices—mostly in
premium and high-end devices for now—but its
allocation is fragmented and less uniform across
countries.
The 60 GHz band (λ ≈ ½ cm) has 9,000 MHz
between 57 and 66 GHz. This band is relatively new
and promising, though the laws of physics put some
limitations on the ways it can be used.
The dominant wireless broadband technology in these
three bands is Wi-Fi, which is based on the IEEE 802.11
wireless LAN standard. Wireless LAN technology is now
heavily used for private networks in homes as well as in
the workplace. Then there is public Wi-Fi, which is
common in cafés, restaurants, airports, hotels, shopping
malls, and increasingly on trains and planes. Sometimes
it is complimentary, and sometimes we have to pay for it.
In fact, in several small, densely populated developed
nations such as Singapore, Wi-Fi can be found almost
anywhere.
While cellular carriers have been good at providing
coverage—especially outdoors—they face both coverage
and capacity challenges as the demand for broadband
internet access grows.
There can be a coverage problem at the network’s
edge, in locations where installing radio
infrastructure, such as towers, cannot be justified
financially.
There is a coverage problem indoors, because the
materials a building is made of—especially stone,
concrete, steel and metallized sun-control
film—can block radio signals to and from the
carrier’s cell tower outdoors.
There can be a capacity problem in “hotspots”
where many people congregate. This isn’t a
problem if the carrier has enough licensed
spectrum to address this demand. However,
spectrum licenses are expensive, and budgeting
spectrum for the capacity demands of hotspots
would leave most of that spectrum unused
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