Impacts of Encryption Everywhere (any solution?)

Wed May 30 20:44:52 UTC 2018

On 30/May/18 19:47, McBride, Mack wrote:

> Scott hit the nail on the head.
>
> Hotel/café/mall wifi is generally horrible for the same reason urban
> 4g is horrible.
>

Urban 4G in Africa isn't that bad, actually. The factors are many - not
all users are on smart phones, or if they are, may default to 2G/3G more
often than 4G. Also, because data prices are not pocket-friendly in many
cases, the amount of time spent on the radio network for data is not
significant.

On the other hand, I generally get poor coverage (i.e., 1 bar) even in
urban cities when I travel the U.S., particularly on AT&T, and
sometimes, T-Mobile. Never quite understood that, but I've been having a
side discussion from this thread with some mates that has shed some
light, which makes a bit of sense to me. So not sure if that's the issue
you face, or if it's something else.

My point is while the technology has its intrinsic limitations, user
patterns and applications that differ between the developed and
developing worlds may have their part to play.

> The backhaul and load on the available spectrum is usually excessive.
>

Spectrum, yes... see my previous response to K. Scott.

Backhaul isn't a major issue - pretty much, every MNO in Africa has
their own Metro and national fibre backbone; and in some cases, even
their own submarine backbone.

> Carrier wifi is usually (but not always) equipped with decent backhaul.
>

Wi-fi offload has been attempted a few times by one or two MNO's in
Africa. But they can't decide between beta testing or launching. Bottom
line is wi-fi offload is not big in Africa, and yet the 3G/4G radio
network is still able to support traffic levels. I suspect it will
become more popular as the radio load increases, although one would say
the MNO's are looking at 5G before they consider wi-fi offload seriously.

> However carrier wifi in stadiums usually suffers from problems with
> spectrum saturation.
>
> Any wifi or 4G will eventually run out of available bandwidth on
> assigned spectrum.
>
> Wifi has the advantage of being able to use smaller range restricted
> access points but
>
> the stadium example shows why even that is limited when you have 40K
> people trying
>
> to access the internet.
>

Agreed.

Mark.