What are the differences between unlicensed and licensed spectrum? And what is the relation between unlicensed spectrum WIFI and the benefits Wi-Fi brings to society? Let’s answer these answers below.

The term spectrum wifi refers to all the radio frequencies, from 3 kHz to 300 GHz, available for wireless communications. There are two types of radio spectrum established by the Federal Communication Commission: licensed and unlicensed. Licensed spectrum consists of frequencies made available to companies for a specific use, i.e. cellular companies connecting people through wireless phone services that work transmitting data over the air. Spectrum licenses provided by the FCC are always needed for mobile operators, i.e. Verizon and AT&T, and establish conditions such as fees and charges and other parameters such as the frequency band – in general between 700 MHz and 2.6 GHz – and network coverage they can use: indeed, mobile carriers providing 3G and 4G mobile services can’t operate on the same band at the same time and with the same geographical reach. In this respect, the FCC regularly checks on its spectrum dashboard “how spectrum bands are allocated and for what uses, and who holds licenses and in what areas”.

On the other hand, unlicensed spectrum wifi is publicly owned, has light rules to follow and is free, meaning no paid license is needed for those who want to use it. Wi-Fi is the most popular technology taking advantage of the affordable unlicensed spectrum in order to deliver high-performing connectivity, and it can carry more data traffic than other wireless solutions. For this reason, unlicensed spectrum is an extremely valuable benefit for people, who more and more rely on Wi-Fi as the main resource for accessing the internet. Let’s see the main advantages unlicensed spectrum brings to technologies such as Wi-Fi and, consequently, to society as a whole:

• Unlicensed spectrum is an open door to innovation: by relying on an affordable access to airwaves, innovators operating on unlicensed spectrum, i.e. companies and organizations belonging to the Wi-Fi industry, have the opportunity to develop new applications to facilitate connectivity and equip devices with more capabilities, i.e. the possibility to receive notifications on smartphones about the level of energy users are using, the opportunity to manage your device remotely, etc.
• Another advantage of unlicensed spectrum is related to the greater demand for mobile services. Indeed, the increasing development of devices – especially smartphones and tablets – and the related big data demand imply a larger need for spectrum in order to have more capacity. Nevertheless, licensed spectrum is already congested by wireless carriers and other telecommunication operators, which paves the way for unlicensed spectrum to be a widely used and much cheaper alternative to face future user needs. In this respect, Wi-Fi is the unlicensed spectrum-based technology with the right requirements to handle the growing demand for connectivity, as it can increase the capacity of mobile networks and can carry large amounts of data traffic.
• Being broadly adopted by innovative wireless technologies such as Wi-Fi, the unlicensed spectrum has a positive impact on the whole society. Indeed, it represents a cost-effective solution for both urban environments and rural areas. For instance, thanks to unlicensed spectrum, Wi-Fi solution providers have the possibility to: empower communities deploying free Wi-Fi in public areas; improve public transportation by using Wi-Fi on buses and trains, as a way to encourage more people to switch from private to public means of transportation; facilitate rural health care, by enabling patient of rural areas to use their Wi-Fi network to reach doctors remotely.

Unlicensed spectrum wifi is a highly valuable resource, which can be smartly leveraged by wireless technologies such as Wi-Fi in order to boost innovation and find effective ways to bring improvements to the whole society.

Let’s find out in this post the main 4 Wi-Fi cloud-based services MSPs should provide SMEs with, in order to add value to their offering.

Nowadays, more and more small and medium-sized companies rely on cloud-based services to grow their Wi-Fi businesses and improve their productivity. According to the Worldwide Semiannual Public Cloud Services Spending Guide from International Data Corporation (IDC), the overall spending on public cloud services will grow from $70 billion in 2015 to $141 billion in 2019 at the worldwide level. Specifically, from a company size point of view, SMBs counting less than 500 employees will count for more than 40% of the total expenditure. Accordingly, MSPs should leverage cloud computing to offer valuable cloud-based services to their customers.

In parallel to the overall growth of the cloud computing market, we’ve seen that an increasing number of manufacturers and software companies in the Wi-Fi space has started delivering cloud-based services to manage and monitor Wi-Fi networks, replacing hardware controllers with virtual cloud-based network controllers.

Here is a list of 4 much-sought Wi-Fi cloud-based services in the small and midsize markets, which MSPs should offer to add value to their services.

1. Cloud-based Wi-Fi zero-touch deployment

Small and medium-sized companies can gain greater flexibility from managing their Wi-Fi networks on the cloud, as they can run their businesses from anywhere, anytime. Furthermore, thanks to remote management enterprises do not have to take total control over the infrastructure anymore, which allows them to dedicate more time to other activities. Accordingly, you should provide a serviceable to make things easier both for you and your customers: the Wi-Fi cloud-based management offered by Tanaza, for instance, ensures 100% remote deployment, configuration, firmware upgrade, and troubleshooting. In this way, you won’t have to go on-site to reboot a broken access point, and you will be able to configure all aspects of your clients’ networks directly from the Tanaza Cloud Dashboard: this will save a lot of time for both of you!  

2. Wi-Fi cloud-based monitoring

Cloud-based monitoring is a very useful service to offer, as it allows companies to save time and easily monitor their deployments located in one or more places worldwide. MSPs can rely on Tanaza, the easy-to-use, and affordable cloud-based software for remotely monitoring small or large networks of access points, in real-time. Furthermore, it gives the possibility to set up customizable instant alerts, i.e. through emails or SMS, if the system is experiencing issues, such as capacity overloads or faults.

3. Wi-Fi cloud-based content filtering and malware protection

The possibility for companies to filter web content based on their business needs is a must-have service. Through a cloud-based filtering solution, network administrators can block certain content, i.e. pornography and other distasteful or illegal websites, on the basis of a set of different categories. In this way, users can access only a selected range of domains while navigating online. Tanaza provides an effective and easy-to-use web content filtering system, which allows hotspot providers to check online content and effectively secure public Wi-Fi hotspots from very common cyber threats, such as malware and botnets.

4. Cloud-based Wi-Fi analytics

Your customers collect a broad range of useful data when users authenticate before accessing their Wi-Fi networks and want to leverage it to enhance their competitive advantage. Accordingly, it is smart to offer them the opportunity to collect this information and analyze it for their statistics and marketing purposes. Thanks to Tanaza, you can provide your customers with the right solution: a multi-tenant cloud-based platform for Wi-Fi users’ data analytics. The network admin can see different data stored on the user-friendly Tanaza Dashboard, i.e. the number of sessions, the number of new and returning users, and the number of Likes collected through Wi-Fi. Also, Tanaza allows filtering and segmenting data according to a variety of parameters, such as age range, gender, location, and login flow. 

Related articles:

https://www.classichotspot.com/blog/6-steps-increase-profits-selling-wi-fi-services/

https://www.classichotspot.com/blog/how-cloud-based-wi-fi-management-improves-your-business/

https://www.classichotspot.com/blog/the-main-changes-when-switching-from-on-premise-to-saas/