Charting a Course to Carrier-Grade Wi-Fi

Cablevision’s recently launched voice-over-Wi-Fi service, Freewheel, is unlikely to be the last such offering, as cable operators continue to add hotspots in their service territories and develop new ways to monetize Wi-Fi technology. To do that, they need to up their game in terms of the reliability, strength and availability of Wi-Fi access.

Many operators are moving in that direction, but it’s going to take a couple of years for carrier-grade Wi-Fi to be ubiquitously deployed across the country, according to several experts in the field. A recent survey from Real Wireless for billings and operations software vendor Amdocs found that carrier-grade Wi-Fi will grow from 14 percent in 2014 to 85 percent by the end of 2016. Some 85 percent of operator respondents said they plan to invest in carrier-grade Wi-Fi by that time.