Fueled by its recent success in provisioning on-site wireless Internet access, Wi-Fi is currently perceived as the best positioned technology for pervasive mobile macro network offloading. However, the broad transitions of multiple collocated operators towards this new paradigm may result in fierce competition for the common unlicensed spectrum at hand. In this light, our paper game-theoretically dissects market convergence scenarios by assessing the competition between providers in terms of network performance, capacity constraints, cost reductions, and revenue prospects. We will closely compare the prospects and strategic positioning of fixed line operators offering Wi-Fi services with respect to competing mobile network operators utilizing unlicensed spectrum. Our results highlight important dependencies upon inter-operator collaboration models, and more importantly, upon the ratio between backhaul and Wi-Fi access bit-rates. Furthermore, our investigation of medium-to long-term convergence scenarios indicates that a rethinking of control measures targeting the large-scale monetization of unlicensed spectrum may be required, as otherwise the used free bands may become subject to tragedy-of-commons type of problems.
@cite_2: We present procedures that exploit mobility prediction and prefetching to enhance offoading of trafic from mobile networks to WiFi hotspots, for both delay tolerant and delay sensitive trafic. We evaluate the procedures in terms of the percentage of offoaded trafic, the data transfer delay, and the cache size used for prefetching. The evaluation considers empirical measurements and shows how various parameters infuence the performance of the procedures, and their robustness to time and throughput estimation errors.
For the automation of traffic offload, a feasible selection of traffic seems to be required. Siris and Kalyvas @cite_2 have followed up on this idea by offloading delay tolerant traffic based on a designed mobility prediction. Thus, a concentration on nomadic users for mobile traffic offload, e.g., in home scenarios, combined with mass deployment of accessible Wi-Fi hotspots may be of highest interest. In addition, application-awareness seems to be necessary in order to optimally target user requirements, e.g., through Quality of Experience (QoE) trials for applications which have important delay constraints Apple Not Throttling iPhone or iPad Cellular Throughput via Carrier Bundles'': http: www.anandtech.com show 7037 apple-not-throttling-iphones-ipads-cellular-throughput-via-carrier-bundles- , last accessed: June 16, 2013 .