Embrace LTE-Unlicensed, Don't Fight It, Developer Says

Big companies that have invested in W-Fi should welcome LTE-unlicensed, not fight it, said Richard Bennett, a developer of the Wi-Fi media access control (MAC) protocol, in a Tuesday blog post. Because LTE-U is a variation of the MAC protocol used by mobile phones, “it can operate over large distances -- miles -- without substantial loss of efficiency, and it can also operate more efficiently over short distances at high data rates,” Bennett wrote. “The LTE-U base station acts as coordinator to ensure that spectrum is shared fairly and quickly without unnecessary overhead.” Big companies that have invested heavily in Wi-Fi complain about possible interference between Wi-Fi and LTE-U, but “they usually don’t emphasize the more pertinent issue: performance,” he said. “Even when LTE-U and Wi-Fi are operating on different channels and therefore not interfering with each other, LTE-U will outperform Wi-Fi. This makes LTE-U a more attractive technical offering.” Bennett is an American Enterprise Institute fellow.