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Cellphone Start-Ups Handle Calls With Wi-Fi
HughPickens.com writes Brian Chen writes in the NYT that two companies, Republic Wireless and FreedomPop, that reduce cellphone costs by relying on strategically placed Wi-Fi routers are at the forefront of a tantalizing communications concept that has proved hard to produce on a big scale, The concept championed by the two little companies in their nationwide services is surprisingly simple. They offer services that rely primarily on Wi-Fi networks, and in areas without Wi-Fi, customers can pull a signal from regular cell towers. "Wi-Fi first is a massive disrupter to the current cost structure of the industry," says Stephen Stokols. "That's going to be a big shock to the carriers." For $5 a month, customers of Republic Wireless can make calls or connect to the Internet solely over Wi-Fi. For $10 a month, they can use both Wi-Fi and a cellular connection from Sprint in Republic's most popular option. Republic Wireless's parent company, Bandwidth.com, a telecommunications provider with about 400 employees, developed a technique to move calls seamlessly between different Wi-Fi networks and cell towers. "You can't pretend these companies are major players by any stretch. But I think their real importance is proof of concept," says Craig Moffett. "They demonstrate just how disruptive a Wi-Fi-first operator can be, and just how much cost they can take out."
In major cities, the Wi-Fi-first network makes sense. People use smartphones frequently while sitting around their offices and apartments, and Wi-Fi can handle the job just fine. But once people start moving around, it is not so simple. The benefit of a cell service is that your phone can switch among multiple towers while you are on the go which wi-fi is not designed to handle. Google may be experimenting with a hybrid approach similar to the small companies'. A person briefed on Google's plans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the conversations were private, says the company wants to make use of the fiber network it has installed in various cities to create an enormous network of Wi-Fi connections that phones could use to place calls and use apps over the Internet. In areas out of reach, Google's network would switch over to cell towers leased by T-Mobile USA and Sprint. Still many wonder if even the biggest companies could make a Wi-Fi-based phone network work. "There are just so many places where Wi-Fi doesn't reach," says Jan Dawson "and the quality of Wi-Fi that you can find is often subpar."
In major cities, the Wi-Fi-first network makes sense. People use smartphones frequently while sitting around their offices and apartments, and Wi-Fi can handle the job just fine. But once people start moving around, it is not so simple. The benefit of a cell service is that your phone can switch among multiple towers while you are on the go which wi-fi is not designed to handle. Google may be experimenting with a hybrid approach similar to the small companies'. A person briefed on Google's plans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the conversations were private, says the company wants to make use of the fiber network it has installed in various cities to create an enormous network of Wi-Fi connections that phones could use to place calls and use apps over the Internet. In areas out of reach, Google's network would switch over to cell towers leased by T-Mobile USA and Sprint. Still many wonder if even the biggest companies could make a Wi-Fi-based phone network work. "There are just so many places where Wi-Fi doesn't reach," says Jan Dawson "and the quality of Wi-Fi that you can find is often subpar."
Republic Wireless's parent company, Bandwidth.com, a telecommunications provider with about 400 employees, developed a technique to move calls seamlessly between different Wi-Fi networks and cell towers.
That's been around forever. T-Mobile had this back in 2006 or 2007. It's called Generic Access Network. I played around with it back in the day when T-Mobile gave you unlimited calling if you subscribed to this, they even had a specially branded version of the WRT-54GL called the WRT-54TM, which I still have. It apparently did some power saving stuff that the standard WRT54GL didn't implement at the time,ich I'm just standard WMM; it makes for a nice dd-wrt router, since the T-Mobile model had more memory than the standard WRT-54GL, supposedly they requested that so they could add more features down the line. Ultimately they abandoned the concept of free wi-fi calling, there were only three phones that supported it back in the day, though it's my understanding that they still use the same technology so their customers can place calls while traveling aboard without paying roaming rates.
Anyway, I digress. This reeks of a press release that was issued to generate buzz and stock purchases. Is this what /. has come to? There's nothing new here. These ideas were discussed in the early 2000s and largely moved away from. Voice minutes aren't a significant expense for cellular carriers these days.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I am a bit confused here. Are they installing wifi infrastructure linking back to their own network, or at they depending on the consumer to piggy back on random people's base stations?
I have a hard time picturing wi-fi being all that good for calls since all a cell phone network is, really, is a specialized wi-fi network designed from the ground up to deal with the cell phone use-case. So if they are just spreading base stations around their coverage area then all they are really doing is setting up cheap crappy cell towers, and if they are piggy backing then yeah, it is easy to offer a low price when someone else is picking up the tab, which I can not imagine will last long.
from the summary:
I bought the Republic first-generation Android Moto X phone about a year ago and have used their 4G/$40.00 a month plan since. The only wireless networks which I connect to are my home network, work network, and free networks in airports and hotels when I travel. Republic will throttle the data rate if I exceed 5GB of cell data usage in one billing period, about a month.
So now for the million dollar question: Does that work? With only those connection, do I break the caps because too much of my data travels over cell towers instead of wifi? Ya, it works. I never get even close to the caps. Partly this is because the phone is smart about deferring low-priority high-bandwidth tasks until it picks up a wifi network. The big one here is auto synching photo and video to my google photo account. The other thing is my usage pattern is normally not to gobble up a lot of data while in transit because I commute to work by driving. If I were streaming Netflix or Amazon Prime video daily on an Amtrak commute then I might have a problem, depending on how severely they throttle.
There is more to Republic than just their wifi/cell tower technology: They work really hard not to be assholes about billing. There are no lock-in contracts and amazingly, you can conveniently change your cell plan up to twice a month, from $5.00 wifi-only policy to higher data rates at $10, $25 and $40 per month plans. The amount you are billed never exceeds those limits, regardless of your usage, they just throttle data rates instead of adding more to your bill.
I have only one gripe: I use my Republic phone with Google Voice and mostly the voice lag was insanely long. Seems to have improved a lot recently though. Not sure if that is attributable to the phone, to Google Voice, or to the two in combination.
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Personal anecdote here. I signed up for Freedom Pop last year. After three weeks the phone arrived. After using it for five weeks I gave up. Each and every call had drop outs, severe distortion, or a disconnect. Freedom Pop ignored all my email and phone calls about the poor service. I was asked to call different numbers that did not resolve their poor VOIP implementation. The issue is Freedom Pop has a great idea but horrible implementation. I use the phone as a Square register now. Every now and then I check the call quality. It's still horrible over both WiFi and Sprints 4G data network. I advise others to skip Freedom Pop if you plan to use the phone with the intention of having conversations that are intelligible by both parties.