Indoor cellular success requires give and take

Give a little to get a little when it comes to new indoor architectures

Industry analysis by expert Joanie Wexler, plus links to the day's wireless news headlines

You can get cellular coverage into buildings more affordably and less painfully than has been possible in the past. But a few Wireless Alert readers take issue with alternatives that piggyback onto the Ethernet LAN they've built or the Internet access connection they pay for each month.

These folks' discomfort is one of principle. They don't feel it's right for cellular operators to poach on enterprise network resources. Fair enough. So then the question becomes: Would you rather have good indoor mobile coverage, which possibly takes a nibble out of your existing bandwidth, or have lousy or no coverage at all?

If you prefer lousy or no cellular coverage, you might plan to use Wi-Fi for wireless VoIP and data indoors. A fine choice, but note that when you deploy Wi-Fi, your primary distribution mechanism throughout the building for that traffic will also be your Ethernet network. So the impact will be similar.

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You can get cellular coverage into buildings more affordably and less painfully than has been possible in the past. But a few Wireless Alert readers take issue with alternatives that piggyback onto the Ethernet LAN they've built or the Internet access connection they pay for each month.

These folks' discomfort is one of principle. They don't feel it's right for cellular operators to poach on enterprise network resources. Fair enough. So then the question becomes: Would you rather have good indoor mobile coverage, which possibly takes a nibble out of your existing bandwidth, or have lousy or no coverage at all?

If you prefer lousy or no cellular coverage, you might plan to use Wi-Fi for wireless VoIP and data indoors. A fine choice, but note that when you deploy Wi-Fi, your primary distribution mechanism throughout the building for that traffic will also be your Ethernet network. So the impact will be similar.

All in-building cellular alternatives, old and new, require you to use your own backhaul network to transport voice and data either across the Internet or directly to the mobile operator's core network. So if you choose to bring cellular indoors, you're going to give up at least some of your backhaul bandwidth for now, whether you use emerging femtocells, Unlicensed Mobile Access or something else.

Some newer alternatives, such as MobileAccess' new EnCOVER VE distributed antenna system (DAS) and start-up SpiderCloud Wireless' enterprise radio access network (E-RAN), use the enterprise's Ethernet infrastructure for local cellular traffic distribution. Marcus Watson, director of product management at MobileAccess, says the VE doesn't impinge on Ethernet capacity because it supports an analog distribution system that "sits above Ethernet, like frequencies on your FM band within the same spectrum."

Ronny Haraldsvik, vice president of marketing at SpiderCloud Wireless, says his company's E-RAN runs circuit-switched cellular voice traffic uncompressed, consuming a negligible 64Kbps per session.

The impact that wireless data will have on Ethernet -- or any other network, for that matter -- is pretty hard to predict, he acknowledges, as iPhone and other high-end smartphone applications suck up increasingly greater volumes of bandwidth.

Bottom line: if indoor cellular coverage is important to you, avoid cutting off your nose to spite your face by at least considering new Ethernet-based architectures to distribute wireless traffic. Who knows? Perhaps letting your cellular carrier(s) poach a little might be a contract negotiation bargaining chip for you.

Read more about wireless & mobile in Network World's Wireless & Mobile section.

Joanie Wexler is an independent networking technology writer/editor in Silicon Valley.