At the end of this blog, we answer the following frequently asked questions in addition to other topics:

Q1. What is WiFi?

Q2. What is WiFi 6?

How Is Data Analytics Providing a Platform for Network Monetisation?

Better intelligence-driven data analytics techniques are providing a solid platform for operators to increase their chances of monetising their networks. With more and more operators moving towards an era of heterogeneous networks, where different technologies such as 3G, 4G LTE and Wi-Fi coexist, it is increasingly coming down to their ability to monetise subscriber transactions that are deciding the winners in the next generation race for telecoms profitability.

In such a scenario, gathering the right amount of subscriber related business intelligence is seen as a great way to boost the potential of monetisation, especially from Wi-Fi networks. Driven by a crunch to deliver data-intensive services, a large set of operators are moving towards embracing heterogeneous network environments and hence there is an increasing demand for closely weaving Wi-Fi inside the network fabric.

But on the other hand, managing such a great amount of network complexity with the control systems along with the wealth of data flowing is a great challenge for the operator community and hence, operators are continuously looking forward to incorporating effective ways to achieve qualitative subscriber-based insights from quantitative data originating inside their network environment. And even when operators are successful in obtaining rich subscriber data, they find it extremely difficult to monetise such data-intensive opportunities. This is where an intelligence-driven network monetisation can help operators mobilize better revenue opportunities from their existing network ecosystem.

Network-driven business intelligence is seen as a set of decision-making tools and applications that can be used to collect, store and analyse subscriber data which can be further converted into actionable information for operators’ monetisation goals. Some of such applications and strategies are built around data usage and device usage analytics coming from subscriber data and hence such analytics drives operators to provide better plans based on network usage, devices, preferences, location, data usage, promotional offers and thus deliver the requisite quality of experience (QoE), and gain more from their existing infrastructure investments.

What Can Be Said About the Power of Wi-Fi Business Intelligence in Monetisation?

There is essentially a requirement of Smart Wi-Fi with business Intelligence that builds the analytics to analyze and monitor Wi-Fi data to provide exceptional quality of service with enhanced operational efficiency and innovative plans/bundled packages. Using such intelligence will help operators to create dynamic policies based on user requirement and thus offer differentiated services enabling the launch of new innovative business models that enable operators to monetise from the Wi-Fi network.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. What is WiFi?

Put simply, Wifi is a technology that uses radio waves to create a wireless network through which devices like mobile phones, computers, printers etc., connect to the internet. A wireless router is needed to establish a Wifi hotspot that people in its vicinity may avail to get access to internet services. You’re sure to have encountered such a Wifi hotspot in houses, offices, restaurants, etc.

To get a little more technical, Wifi works by enabling a Wireless Local Area Network or WLAN, that allows for devices connected to it to exchange signals with the internet via a router. The frequencies of these signals are either 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz bandwidths. These frequencies are much higher than those transmitted to or by radios, mobile phones, and televisions since Wifi signals need to carry significantly greater amounts of data. The networking standards are variants of 802.11, of which there are several (802.11a, 802.11b, 801.11g, etc.).

Q2. What is WiFi 6?

WiFi stands for Wireless Fidelity and is also a common name for Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN). WiFi 6 is the newest and fastest version of the WiFi 802.11 wireless local area network specification standard. IEEE 802.11ax or commonly marketed as WiFi 6 by the industry body WiFi-Alliance is a major advancement over its previous generation that offers multiple devices to run concurrently on one network without compromising on the data speeds and response times.

The 802.11ax standard was approved by the IEEE on 9th February 2021 is designed to operate between 1 and 7.125 GHz, including the widely used 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands. To better understand, WiFi or Wireless Fidelity devices usually translate radio waves into binary code using a technique called QAM ie Quadrature Amplitude Modulation. The older generations of WiFi are capable of 256 QAM ie it could send 8 bits of binary data in a single transmission whereas WiFi 6 is capable of 1024 QAM ie 10 bits of binary data in a single transmission.

This significant increase helps WiFi 6 devices to provide 30% faster speeds than its predecessors. The previous WiFi standards like 802.11/a/g/n/ac used OFDM which meant all of the subcarriers or tones were allocated to a single device at any instance of time. WiFi 5 introduced Multi-user MIMO enabling multiple users on the wireless medium at the same time thereby adding multiple users across different streams with each device using all of the subcarriers.

With WiFi 6, OFDMA can now portion up the individual sub-carriers or tones and these can be allocated to a number of devices. Apart from greater bandwidths, higher data speeds snd lower latencies, WiFi 6 also offers better spectrum utilisation using orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA), Multi-user MIMO support, better power consumption and enhanced security protocols.