Metropolitan Public WiFi Access Based on Broadband Sharing

As mobile applications become more pervasive and the demand for affordable mobile broadband Internet access grows, bandwidth sharing solutions via IEEE 802.11-based technology populate the telecommunications market. Many of the existing solutions are based on the willingness of Internet user communities to share their broadband connection at home. However, some other access sharing models have introduce incentives for those users that share their Internet connection. Another aspect that differentiates current solutions is the approach to deploy such a service. In general, these solutions can be grouped in three categories: the ones that follow a guerrilla approach, those that partner with ISPs, and the sharing solutions that originate inside the telcos. These options are compared in this paper from the business and technology angles, discussing the pros and cons of each of them. In addition, a broadband sharing enabling solution, called Extended HotSpots is described. This solution was evaluated during a field trial in the city of Berlin and the results collected are included in this paper.