Masayoshi Son, CEO of Japan’s third largest telecoms and media company, Softbank, said at a recent conference that without Wi-Fi, mobile networks will not be able to cope with the demands placed by data-intensive applications on portable devices:
“Touching on the Japanese experience, he said that 50 percent of data traffic happens from home during peak periods which makes it ideal to harness WiFi technology. He added that 3G and 4G is the way to have blanket coverage but WiFi helps provide a richer experience. Saying that mobile, not the computer, will be the mainstay access the Internet, he declared that Softbank would invest aggressively in LTE but we ‘would need both WiFi and mobile’.”
The Softbank CEO directed his warning to those in the Japanese wireless industry who believe that LTE alone will satisfy the demand for bandwidth especially among smartphone users. Read more about the rollout of LTE in Japan.
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I made the same argument on Fox Business yesterday. Carriers everywhere have to reckon with the explosion of mobile data traffic, its effect on their cell networks, and the necessity of having to build Wi-Fi networks.
Here’s the link:
http://www.foxbusiness.com/search-results/m/27724529/free-wifi-coming-to-a-town-near-you.htm#q=wired+towns