LTE-U
In February 2017 the Federal Communications Commission
(FCC) announced that it has authorized the first hardware that will let
wireless carriers send mobile internet over unlicensed airwaves. The new tech, known as LTE-U (the U
standing for “unlicensed”), aims to give carriers more network capacity by using the
unlicensed 5 GHz band already populated by Wi-Fi devices.
While
cell providers ordinarily rely on the radio spectrum, LTE-U won’t expand a given carrier’s coverage, but instead share space with Wi-Fi equipment
already inhabiting that band – smartphones, laptops and tablets connecting to
home broadband networks, free hotspots provided by businesses etc. and aims
to improve LTE service in crowded areas like offices, stadiums, and denser
city environments.
The
WiFi Alliance, a trade group that certifies WiFi equipment, ultimately
released a “Coexistance Test Plan” that sought to ensure LTE-U devices
wouldn’t interfere with WiFi out in the wild. The idea is to let mobile
networks sense when WiFi and Bluetooth aren’t using a particular channel,
then apply LTE-U when a carrier's licensed network is congested.
You'll
likely need a new phone to see the benefits, though. While the LTE modems built
into today’s highest-end smartphone chipsets can theoretically support LTE-U,
T-Mobile said most devices compatible with the tech will start rolling out
“this spring.”
In
2014, the LTE-U Forum was created by Verizon, in conjunction
with Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Qualcomm, and Samsung as
members. The forum collaborates and creates technical specifications for
base stations and consumer devices passing LTE-U on the unlicensed 5 GHz
band, as well as coexistence specs to handle traffic contention with existing
Wi-Fi devices.
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