AT&T Pushing for Wi-Fi Standardization

AT&T has been pushing for quite a while now to expand the number of Wi-Fi roaming agreements and for the standardization work of the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) and the GSMA. If these standardization efforts become the norm, it would mean that AT&T’s cellular customers would be able to log onto carrier grade Wi-Fi networks more securely and would make it that much easier for operators to come to roaming settlement agreements.

The company believes that by managing to forge roaming agreements it will be able to increase revenue for everyone involved. AT&T also believes that GSM standardization success when it comes to international standards can be applied to Wi-Fi as well.

The company seems to understand that its customers want access to high connectivity speeds that come with quality Wi-Fi networks. The desire to be able to access Wi-Fi networks through customers’ smartphones is growing, considering the load that wireless networks are currently facing. With more people than ever using mobile devices that use cellular networks, Wi-Fi networks are a way to ease the strain.

There are a couple of different standardization initiatives when it comes to Wi-Fi networks already underway. The GSMA and WBA are working on Hotspot 2.0 and Passspoint. These are both next generation Wi-Fi Hotspots that are designed to make it easier for SIM-based connections on Wi-Fi networks. These next gen Hotspots will also allow mobile operators to securely identify their users, no matter what kind of network they are connecting on.

The WBA has announced that AT&T is one of eight global operators to reach a level of standardization that means they will be able to connect to these next generation Hotspots with full operability. All of these efforts are coming in light of a new Juniper research study, which shows that 50 percent of all Internet traffic done by 3G and 4G enabled devices will be running on Wi-Fi networks by 2017.