* Mobile operator rules about enterprise wireless routing remain murky
The mobile carriers need to clarify their stance on enterprise use of their wireless WANs as primary or backup WAN access links.
For several years, I’ve been briefed by any number of companies (such as Cisco, AdTran and others) that build 3G modules into their branch-office routers. What’s never been clear — and has yet to be answered to my satisfaction by either the equipment makers or the carriers — is what the carriers’ policies are about using cellular routers in the enterprise to aggregate data over the mobile WAN.
Good and wicked cool mobile wireless companies to watch
This may seem like a Wireless 101 question, but, honestly, it’s one that gets murky and noncommittal answers. The carriers have long prohibited, in their general terms and conditions, the sharing of a WAN link by multiple sources (the basic function of a router). Yet plenty of companies make such routers; most even claim that the equipment is “AT&T-certified” or “Verizon Wireless-certified,” and so forth. When I ask these equipment makers about carriers’ rules about using wireless routers, they stare at me blankly, then shrug.
At the consumer level, we know that Verizon Wireless and Sprint now do expressly allow the sharing by individuals of a 3G link through the use of a MiFi device and accompanying service. The MiFi device creates a little impromptu Wi-Fi hotspot that multiple devices in the area can share and communicate over a shared 3G link.
We also know that AT&T, at least as of this writing, expressly prohibits such usage. And both AT&T and Verizon Wireless prohibit the following use of their networks: “as a substitute or backup for private lines or dedicated data connections.”
What else would you use a 3G router module in your Cisco ISR for?
Here’s what I recently received as a statement from AT&T (after a two-month wait), regarding its terms and conditions for its Business Connect pricing plans for enterprises:
“AT&T, through our Business Connect pricing plans, allows wireless routers for the intended use with machine-to-machine and/or Wireless Wide Area Network (WWAN) applications” (what other kind would they be?) “and not for support of individual remote or mobile workers using a laptop or PDA. Plans designed for laptop and PDA customers do not allow aggregation across a common connection to the AT&T wireless network. Likewise, AT&T does not allow the use of ‘SIM Gateway’ devices (that aggregate and transform calls from a fixed-to-mobile call to a mobile-to-mobile call). See WWW.ATT.COM for further details and terms of our plans.”
There are lots of “buts” and “huh?s” that go along with this statement. More on that in another newsletter.
