According to ABI Research, LTE-U (unlicensed) is creating angst in WiFi markets, but also faces challenges of its own.
Operating in the unlicensed 5 GHz band, LTE-U's coexistence with WiFi has become a concern for the WiFi industry, which anticipates disruption on both the technical and business levels. Unlike WiFi, LTE-U does not sense channel activity before transmitting; instead, it applies a form of time sharing using periodic time slots. Such scheduled transmission of LTE-U not only adds interference and increases collisions for WiFi's opportunistic transmission, ABI says, but also defies the concept of fair sharing as it seizes complete control over the channel and WiFi's transmission window.
LTE-U provides clear advantages for mobile operators. It uses the free unlicensed spectrum to expand network capacity and does so without having to integrate another network, like WiFi, within the cellular core. However, the advantages for end-users are not so clear.
"LTE-U advocates focus on promoting its spectrum utilization superiority over WiFi, promising better data rates and QoS. But will this significantly affect the average mobile user preferences?" wrote Ahmed Ali, research analyst at ABI. "LTE-U small cells in the enterprise still face the same challenges of site permission and the lack of neutral-host support. Concerns of possible interference with WiFi make it even a harder sell."
