T-Mobile is looking for another way to improve its coverage map.
Today, at Mobile World Congress, the wireless industry event held annually in Barcelona, T-Mobile said it plans to use spectrum — typically reserved for WiFi — to improve its LTE network in buildings and urban areas. To do so, it has formed partnerships with with Alcatel-Lucent and Qualcomm, which will be running trials in the second half of this year, and deploying cell site technology and chipsets commercially in the first half of 2016.
T-Mobile has a long history of using WiFi to improve coverage, so this doesn’t come as a big surprise.
The Bellevue, Wash.-based carrier was Apple’s first partner in the U.S. to enable phone calls over WiFi when a cellular connection was poor or unavailable. It also gained a lot of expertise through its acquisition of MetroPCS, which was the first carrier in the U.S. to deploy LTE.
Using 4G technology over WiFi is commonly referred to by two different names: License Assisted Access (LAA), or LTE-Unlicensed (LTE-U). In January, T-Mobile’s CTO Neville Ray wrote a blog post about the potential for LAA. The technology is designed to tap into unused spectrum in the 5GHz Wi-Fi band, which is unlicensed and been set aside for anyone to use.
“Currently, there is approximately 550 MHz of underutilized spectrum in the 5 GHz Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure (UNII) band, which is available for any use within the FCC’s rules for the UNII band,” Ray said. “LAA is a new and innovative approach that allows for licensed and unlicensed spectrum to work seamlessly together.”
The important part of this rollout will be in its execution. If a phone creates any interference for other devices using WiFi in close proximity, then T-Mobile could receive some push back from the WiFi community. But it’s probably worth it for T-Mobile to work out those kinks. Spectrum typically costs carriers millions to acquire, but using the unlicensed band is free.
While the technology sounds promising, it will take some time to deploy. Even if T-Mobile upgrades its network in 2016, it will require customers to have a new phone to take advantage of it.
