5G Experience in an Epidemic of Market Uncertainty

Telecom industry is facing an overarching demand for wireless bandwidth in presence of a burgeoning Internet of Things (IoT) industry that promises to accelerate the “experience economy” by bringing people, places and businesses together at scale.

A recent report derived from Open Signal revealed how Airtel surged ahead of the market leader in subcontinent, Reliance Jio, in five out of six experience categories. This serves as a strong testimonial for laying an early foundation for 5G experience. With the onset of COVID-19 epidemic, telecom companies are further challenged to meet the surge and sudden shift in user experience for collaboration tools and high volume of video calls.

A next-generation ground truth mining solution providing KPIs for 5G experience planning

I led a small team to envision, design and implement a 5G experience planning project with applications of Deep Learning over modern data architectures like Snowflake or a cloud-native Data Lake powered by User Defined Functions (UDFs) that would allow for data curation and labeling. We aspired to build a Neural Net that could predict 5G hotspots in presence of fuzzy, uncertain and non-digitized information in a short period of time. The idea was to build a continuous intelligence rendering solution that would provide the necessary KPIs for movable placement and planning of expensive 5G infrastructure.

With the objective of achieving 5G experience consistency in shifting markets, the solution needed to have two key aspects. It should provide a way to save one or more location or consumer behavior-based calculations (e.g. distance to nearest infrastructure, income levels etc.) as ‘queryable’ tasks, aka UDFs. And it should be able to apply Deep Learning to suggest positional, economic and demographic attributes that would recommend next generation of locations hotspots; thereby providing the similarity in quality of 5G experience regardless of the subsequent metamorphic phase of market and consumer behavior.

Results were surprising and real.

This approach helped identify 6% additional hotspots where 5G experience gaps prevailed within just one county of the state of Texas that included 30,000 odd location points and more than 30 UDF-extracted or labeled attributes attached against each of them. The architecture, as described below, also provided room for consumption and labeling of new generation of information emerging from the rollout.

A modern data architecture is the hallmark for digital innovation and user experience planning where operational and business decision-making can be automated by artificial intelligence (AI) based extraction of inferences from raw information. This form of next generation ground truth mining in presence of unpredictable market conditions, will shape the future of “experience economy” in this new decade.

Source: https://medium.com/@bluephysics/5g-experience-in-an-epidemic-of-market-uncertainty-4b3d1408033a 29 04 20

Telstra Begin Major Wi-Fi Hotspot Rollout

Telstra switched on the first 150 of its free wi-fi hotspots throughout Australia last Wednesday, and expect a total of 1,000 to be operational before Boxing Day.

The move comes as part of Telstra’s $100m Wifi Nation plan, which pledges to establish two million hotspots across the country over the next five years.

The initial locations are amongst some of Australia’s busiest areas, including Melbourne’s Bourke Street Mall, Sydney’s Hyde Park and Brisbane’s King George Square. Future rollouts are expected to target “the heart of local communities”, as well as existing Telstra retail outlets and exchange buildings. Plans are also in place to follow the lead of other trial services in New York City and New Zealand, and repurpose existing payphone locations as wireless hotspots, with up to 8,000 such sites in mind.

Users will be allotted 30 minutes of access time at these hotspots, with existing Telstra customers able to use their home broadband accounts to access these hotspots indefinitely.

“This trial marks the beginning of our ambition to switch on more than two million hotspots across the nation over 5 years and give customers the best Wi-Fi experience in and out of the home,” Gordon Ballantyne, Executive for Telstra Retail, told Mumbrella. “We want customers to have greater options for connecting when they’re out and about. From browsing the web, streaming videos or sharing photos with friends, we want customers to have a taste of what the network will be like next year when Telstra Wi-Fi members will be able to use their home broadband allowance at the hotspots.”

The hotspot locations to be trialled before Christmas will be in towns and regional hubs traditionally popular during the holiday season, Ballantyne added.

Wireless hotspots in a busy shopping district represent a great opportunity for retailers, allowing them to expand online offerings and implement in-depth omnichannel marketing strategies while also providing potential customers the convenience of free internet access. That said, having the hotspots owned and operated by major telecommunications providers exposes a retailer to the potential of restricted utility and competition for bandwidth.

In a further, arguably more controversial move, Telstra have floated the possibility of allowing home broadband customers the option to open their wireless routers to Telstra’s free wi-fi network, allowing strangers on the street access to their bandwidth. Rolling out this service through new model routers for home broadband users, Telstra expect their wi-fi hotspot network to reach two million within the next five years.

This broad-stroke project is mirrored by the approach of competing telco Optus, who as Power Retail reported last month was consulting with local councils in a more selective, pick-and-choose state of mind.
Source: http://www.powerretail.com.au/technology/telstra-wi-fi-hotspot-rollout/

Have satellite, will travel: Iridium, Globalstar target their Earth-spanning networks at consumers

SUMMARY:Iridium and Globalstar have started selling satellite hotspots. They’re slow, and they’re expensive, but they’ll work on mountaintops, in the deepest jungle or most windswept desert, and in Iridium’s case, even at the Earth’s poles.

You can pick up a mobile hotspot from any mobile carrier and get a decent mobile data connection in any city or town or the U.S., but that connection will disappear if on the top of mountain, a few miles into coastal waters or even in a cornfield in rural Kansas. What if you could buy a modem that worked anywhere?

Satellite communications providers Iridium and Globalstar are betting there is a consumer market for just such a mobile hotspot service. And by anywhere, I mean anywhere. Both have constellation of dozens of satellites that barrel through their orbits just above the Earth’s atmosphere. If coverage is what you’re looking for, you can get a Globalstar connection in the middle of the Pacific or an Iridium link at the North Pole.

The trade off is connection speed. Forget about 4G or even 3G speeds; Data links to low-Earth orbit satellites are measured in the single kilobits — slower than dial-up — and both satellite providers use some intense compression technology to ensure they can squeeze simple email and low-rez images through their narrow pipes.

Matt Desch

You won’t be doing any video streaming or even much web surfing on a satellite hotspot, Iridium CEO Matt Desch readily admitted when we talked on the phone last week. But that’s really not the point: The idea is to provide bare-bones connectivity to the vast majority of the world’s service not covered by cellular networks, Desch said. That’s a service not every consumer would pay for, but a certain subset of consumers will, he added.

“We want to expand our market,” Desch said. “Our goal is to move beyond the emergency responder and people working in the field overseas. … We can attract more consumers with a need for [always available] connectivity and maybe even some business users.”

Bridging the gap between polar trekkers and weekend hikers

Today Iridium’s network is the definition of a specialty service. You’re likely to find an Iridium phone on the belt of a U.S. Defense Department contractor in Afghanistan or packed into a dog sled racing in the Iditarod. But Desch is hoping Iridium’s new hotspot will appeal to the hunter wanting to upload a photo of his trophy from deep in the woods, the trekker tweeting her progress from up a mountain or the yachtsman keeping in touch with the office from the middle of the Atlantic.

The Iridium Next satellite constellation

Unlike Iridium’s traditional service, which requires specialty phones, its Go hotspot will connect to any smartphone or laptop via Wi-Fi so customers can continue to use their regular devices, phone numbers and apps. It will even route phone calls and text messages over Iridium’s networks, though it will run it through software installed on the phone to compress their data rates. Iridium is even launching a software developer’s program to encourage app makers to use its compression technology when connected to the network. Facebook might not “Iridium optimize” its app, but developers that specialize in outdoor navigation apps might.

The hotspot won’t be cheap, priced at around $800, and as for data pricing Desch was a bit cagey. Ultimately Iridium’s resellers will set their own rates, but he said standard plans might include metered options for $35 a month and even an unlimited voice and data option for $115 a month. Even when pressed Desch wouldn’t reveal what kind of data bucket you would get, though he said it would likely translate into specific services based on the amount of airtime they used on the network. For instance, $35 could get you 150 emails, 15 voice minutes and a preset amount of weather updates and picture uploads.

That likely translates into just a handful of megabytes. While the unlimited plan might sound appealing to some, keep in mind you’re not going to be running up any multigigabyte tallies on a 25 kbps link (and that’s after full compression). Globalstar, which plans to launch its Sat-Fi service in the second quarter, hasn’t yet revealed its pricing either.

Look Ma, I climbed Kilimanjaro

Ultimately this is a big trade-off of coverage for capacity. Mobile satellite links aren’t just slow, they’re also expensive. You’re never going to get the same data bucket you’d get from a terrestrial mobile operator.

But both Globalstar and Iridium are launching next generation satellite constellations into space. Once active those birds won’t be able to deliver the mobile broadband speeds we’re accustomed to on the ground, but they’ll get closer. Globalstar’s new network will support up to 250 kbps, while Iridium’s will hit the 1 Mbps mark.

Your typical consumer isn’t going to be interested in a regular subscription to an Iridium or Globalstar plan. But I can imagine a situation in which almost every consumer might want to access such a hotspot on a temporary basis. Desch said he expects Go to highly popular in the rental market. For instance, outfitters might rent out hotspots to trekkers before they set out on their expeditions.

The view from the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, where a satellite hotspot would have been handy

For our honeymoon, my wife and I insanely decided to disregard our couch potato tendencies and climb Mount Kilimanjaro (in case you’re wondering, we got to the crater rim where I freaked out from altitude sickness and never made it to the final summit). Spending seven days on a mountain without any form of digital communication might sound refreshing to some, but being who I am, I wanted to blog, tweet and email my way up that rock. $35 doesn’t sound like much of price to pay to be able a tweet a selfie from Uhuru Peak.

 

Source: http://gigaom.com/2014/02/04/have-satellite-will-travel-iridium-globalstar-target-their-earth-spanning-networks-at-consumers/

Standards creating new confidence in Carrier Wi-Fi

WBA study reveals that hotspots will provide 22% of extra cellco capacity, with NGH standards becoming mainstream in 2014

Carrier Wi-Fi is increasingly discussed in the same breath as LTE small cells as a key component of mobile operators’ HetNets, but in reality, the cellcos have largely used hotspots – their own or those of partners – to offload low value data from their overstretched macro networks. That is set to change as they start to integrate Wi-Fi fully, enabling greater capacity and new business models. The change will be enabled by technical advances such as multimode small cells , but critically by standards which allow users to move seamlessly between 3G/4G and Wi-Fi, and these will be the key factor in an upsurge in carrier Wi-Fi investment in 2014.

 

According to a survey of stakeholders in the Wireless Broadband Alliance’s annual report, carried out by Maravedis-Rethink, Wi-Fi already accounts for over one-fifth (22%) of the additional capacity cellcos are adding to their networks in 2013-14, and that contribution is set to increase as carriers implement dual-mode base stations and Wi-Fi devices proliferate.

Standards will be essential to moving from offload – largely a convenience and cost-saver for cellcos – to an enhanced user experience that will support new services and boost customer retention and satisfaction. As JR Wilson, chairman of the WBA, put it: “The biggest change [in 2014] will be one that people won’t even realize has happened – a whole new customer experience enabled by ubiquitous mobile broadband access.” One of the most striking differences in the 2013 survey, compared to the previous year, is that the emphasis on customer experience and value has strengthened markedly.

 

This change of perception is being driven by technologies which enable public Wi-Fi to be integrated far more seamlessly with other networks such as 3G/4G, fiber and cable. The WBA’s Next Generation Hotspot initiative on the infrastructure side, complemented by the Wi-Fi Alliance’s Passpoint program for devices, is a critical element, as are open roaming platforms.

 

The survey of about 200 Wi-Fi ecosystem players highlighted increased confidence in public Wi-Fi, with 52% feeling more bullish about investing than they did a year ago. The key drivers for this investment were pinpointed as easier offload from cellular networks, generating revenues for hotspot owners and savings for MNOs; and the need to increase customer satisfaction in order to reduce churn from operators of all kinds (wireless and wireline). However, there are challenges which have slowed some players’ roll-out plans since last year’s study. These include lack of clear ROI, cited by 44%, overall cost (42%) and device availability.

 

For mobile operators, there is a particular need to focus on public Wi-Fi as their cellular capacity is stretched by the explosion in data usage. Tier one MNOs expect 22% of the capacity they add in 2013 to come from public Wi-Fi and by 2018, 75% of their small cells will have integrated Wi-Fi. There is also a major upturn in Wi-Fi usage by wireline carriers such as the US ‘Cable Wi-FI’ consortium.

The deployment of hotspots will gather pace to meet all these requirements, whether by carriers themselves, specialists or wholesalers. Roll-out by carriers themselves will rise at CAGR of 13% between 2012 and 2018 to reach 10.5 in the last year of that period, with the Asia-Pacific region accounting for the largest percentage – 55% of the base in 2018. Combined with other hotspot deployments, the total installed base will reach over 55m in 2018. Homespots, residential access points where some capacity is left open for the community, will also be a key trend, and their base is likely to top 100m by the end of 2018.

 

When respondents discussed barriers to their public Wi-Fi deployment plans, they generally focused more on business model uncertainty than technology issues. That shows how the market is evolving, addressing many platform challenges while bodies like the WBA look to clarify the business returns. A critical element of that effort is to support seamless roaming through initiatives like the ICP program.

 

Despite some uncertainties, a variety of business models is emerging to add to conventional hotspot and wholesale approaches. These include offload, community Wi-Fi, neutral host services, advertising and, over the horizon, full quad plays and the internet of things. For the short term (2013-14), the most important monetization strategies among the respondents are Wi-Fi offload, closely followed by location-based services such as targeted marketing, and enterprise applications.

Source: http://www.rethink-wireless.com/2013/11/21/standards-creating-new-confidence-carrier-wi-fi.htm

Karma brings its community broadband experiment to LTE

 

SUMMARY:Karma is building a community of mobile broadband users who share their connections without sharing their data. It’s attracted 50,000 users so far, a number it hopes to boost as it moves to Sprint’s LTE network.

For that least year Karma has been growing its shared 4G service on Sprint’s WiMAX network, inviting people to connect to its network over Wi-Fi through other customers’ 4G hotspots. Next year, it plans to expand its reach to more cities – and perhaps make its customers’ connections a lot speedier – by linking to Sprint’s new LTE network.

Karma, a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), has struck a wholesale deal with Sprint to start selling a 4G hotspot that taps its growing LTE network, according to CEO and co-founder Steven van Wel. The details of the device haven’t been worked out, van Wel said, but Karma is hoping it will connect to Sprint’s new Spark network, an amalgamation of Sprint’s three LTE systems that can support speeds over 50 Mbps.

(L to R:) Steven van Wel, CEO, Karma; Sascha Meinrath, VP and Director, New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute; Micha Benoliel, Co-Founder and CEO, Open Garden; Kevin Fitchard, GigaOM Mobilize 2013 (c) 2013 Pinar Ozger pinar@pinarozger.com

Karma is trying to divorce the data plan from the device that connects to the network. As CEO and co-founder Steven van Wel said at Gigaom’s Mobilize conference, if you’re surrounded by Karma hotspots, you should be able to connect to any of them, not just your own. But while you may be sharing a stranger’s connection, you’re not sharing his data – everyone’s usage is deducted from their own accounts.

We’re not surrounded by Karma hotspots yet but the TechStars NYC graduate has managed to attract 50,000 paying customers to its network. Karma offers 100 MB for free when customers first connect, and it rewards hotspot owners 100 MB  whenever they share their connections with a new customer (it’s given away 10,000 GBs so far). It sells additional data for $17 a gigabyte — or $99 for 10 GBs — but that data never expires. It also sells a WiMAX hotspot online, but only 10,000 customers have actually purchased it. The rest are linking to Karma’s network without any hardware, piggybacking off other people’s Wi-Fi routers, van Wel said.

Karma is basically laying the groundwork for a shared bandwidth community (a concept we’ve explored extensively at Gigaom). Right now it doesn’t have so much a community as it does a collection of shared bandwidth tribes: friends and co-workers who spend a lot of time with another and therefore have easy access to each other’s hotspots. As Karma grows, though, the chance of encountering a Karma connection in the wild will increase, allowing it to build that community across major cities and eventually across the country, van Wel said.

Sprint’s LTE network will definitely help, van Wel said. Sprint’s WiMAX network currently only covers about a third of the country’s population, and by the time Karma starts selling its LTE hotspot this spring, Sprint should have much of its nationwide LTE rollout complete. Van Wel said Karma will continue selling its WiMAX device in the interim and will support those devices even after LTE goes live. For hotspot owners that want to upgrade to the network, it will offer discounted devices.

Source: http://gigaom.com/2013/11/06/karma-brings-its-community-broadband-experiment-to-lte/

FON’s new Wi-Fi router is a community hotspot

Buyers can use other FON routers anywhere, free of charge.

 

 

FORTUNE — The “sharing economy” seems to be working for cars and vacation rentals, so why not Wi-Fi?

FON, a Madrid-based company, is trying to cash in on the growing collaborative consumption trend by offering a new, $59 router that turns home Wi-Fi networks into community hotspots. Users open up their network to other FON members, and in turn are able to use any other FON Wi-Fi hotspot free of charge. “It gives you the ability to roam the world for free,” says Martin Varsavsky, CEO and founder of FON.

Shared Wi-Fi may sound like a novel idea, but FON’s actually been around since 2006. While it’s had some success abroad (the company says its routers power a total 12 million hotspots globally), this is its second attempt to make a splash in the U.S. market. The first one didn’t work out so well.

“When we started, it was a world of laptops, and frankly there wasn’t enough demand to drive FON,” admits Varsavsky. “Now it’s a world of smartphones and tablets. There’s much more demand for Wi-Fi now, and everyone has a Wi-Fi device in their pocket.”

American investors embraced FON early on (in 2006 it raised $22 million from Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and other notable firms). But mobile operators weren’t so quick to fall in love with the quirky company, which refers to its users as “Foneros.” Back then, in the pre-iPhone era, carriers saw Wi-Fi as a threat to their cellular networks. Fast-forward to today, and they’re trying to offload mobile network traffic by notifying users when they’re in the vicinity of a Wi-Fi hotspot, among other tactics. Global operators like BT (BT) and Deutsche Telekom (DTEGY) have invested in FON. In the U.S., the company recently partnered with AT&T (T) — customers who pay a premium are now able to access FON’s network of overseas hotspots while traveling abroad.

MORE: How Europe is rocking the startup world

But like other sharing services, FON’s value is determined by the size of the community it spawns. And despite the 12 million global hotspots it boasts, the company’s product doesn’t make much sense outside of urban areas, where proximity to other shared networks could appeal to users.

Lucky for FON, it’s got a nice new trick up its sleeve — the latest, enhanced Fonera router lets users’ friends sign in with their Facebook (FB) credentials, no other password required. In other words, if a family member or friend that’s in your online social network is visiting your home, they can log onto your Wi-Fi network using their own Facebook credentials. (Anyone who has had houseguests and ever blanked on their long and unmemorable Wi-Fi password will likely appreciate this feature). In order to ensure security and privacy, FON says its new router separates a user’s traffic from their friends’ by utilizing different Wi-Fi signals. “One of the simplest obstacles to Wi-Fi has been passwords,” explains Varsavsky.

According to FON, the new router has been tailored for the U.S. market, and will be available on Amazon.com and FON’s website. Whether its Facebook friends-recognizing feature is enough to spur critical mass — and a community of U.S.-based, Wi-Fi loving Foneros — this time around remains to be seen.

Source: http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/10/23/fons-new-wi-fi-router-is-community-hotspot/

Serviceability in Hotspot

Zero Production Incidents

There are couple of Technologies /tools that allow Java programs to be debugged, profiled, monitored and managed. These technologies allow a tool to obtain information from the Java Virtual Machine(JVM) in a different process.

The HotSpot Virtual Machine contains several technologies that allow its operation to be observed by another Java process:

• Performance Counters
• Serviceability Agents
• JVMTI
• Monitoring & Management Interface
• Dynamic Attach
• DTrace
• pstack

 

Hotspot JVM Performance Counters

• HotSpot has the jvmstat perf buffer that collects a list of perf counters output from HotSpot.
• The HotSpot JVM exports a set of instrumentation objects, or counters as they are typically called.
• Jvmstat perf counters are created by default and are always on and are updated by Hotspot.
• The same set of counters are not being exported by JVM at all times, as the counters depend on the arguments specified on the command line.
• The names of these counters and…

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Wireless Wi-Fi – Tips and Tricks

It seems that wireless WiFi is the next big thing. In some cities – Minneapolis, Minnesota – it kinda works ( http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122840941903779747.html ). “This was about a business model that simply didn’t work,” said Rolla Huff, chief executive of EarthLink Inc.

However, your loclal businesses ( McDonalds, your local coffee shop ) almost always supply free Wi-Fi access. It is a cost of doing business and if they don’t do it then they lose customers to the shop down the street.

For most people using these free networks works well. They don’t use banking facilities nor enter their credit card at these sites – and feel that they are safe by avoiding these passwords and Visa, Mastercard info.

Wellllll … lets step back a bit. There are free and widely available wireless sniffers which can watch and capture all of the data you enter and the sites you visit. Bring up facebook ? hotmail ? any site with a password and they can get it. Since you likely use that password for other accounts …

We advocate using a simple and free application called Hotspot Shield . There is a paid version – the free version comes with ads. It places a little red button on all of your browsers. When browsing over ANY ( even at your home Wi-Fi ) you can turn it on / off with a simple click. I can install this and other free software via Remote Support . The following is from the Hotspot Shield site:

Key Benefits to using Hotspot Shield

• Secure your web session, data, online shopping, and personal information online with HTTPS encryption.
• Protect yourself from identity theft online.
• Secure your IP address for your privacy online and private browsing.
• Access all content privately without censorship; bypass firewalls.
• Protect yourself from snoopers at Wi-Fi hotspots, hotels, airports and corporate offices.
• VPN client works on both wireless and wired connections. Provides Unlimited Bandwidth.
• Works on PC and Mac, including new operating systems (Windows 8 and Mountain Lion)

Hotspot Shield protects your entire web surfing session, securing your connection at both your home Internet network & Public Internet networks (both wired and wireless). Hotspot Shield free proxy protects your identity by ensuring that all web transactions (shopping, filling out forms, downloads) are secured through HTTPS. Hotspot Shield also makes you private online, making your identity invisible to third party websites and ISP‘s. Unless you choose to sign into a certain site, you will surf anonymously during your entire web session with Hotspot Shield. We love the web because of the freedom that it creates to explore, organize, and communicate. Hotspot Shield VPN Client enables access to all information online, providing freedom to access all web content freely and securely. Secure your entire web session and ensure your privacy online; your passwords, credit card numbers, and all of your data is secured with Hotspot Shield. The standard antivirus software protects your computer, but not your web activities. That‘s why AnchorFree is pleased to offer Hotspot Shield. Our application keeps your Internet connection secure, private, and anonymous.

100% Security Through a VPN

Hotspot Shield creates a virtual private network (VPN) between your laptop or iPhone and our Internet gateway. This impenetrable tunnel prevents snoopers, hackers, ISP‘s, from viewing your web browsing activities, instant messages, downloads, credit card information or anything else you send over the network. Hotspot Shield security application is free to download, employs the latest VPN technology, offers best Wi-Fi security and is easy to install and use.

Source: http://kingbarry.wordpress.com/2013/03/02/wireless-wi-fi-tips-and-tricks-2/

ZTE launches ultra speed 4G uFi mobile hotspot device

Entelechy Asia

ZTE has launched the ZTE MF93D ultra speed 4G (LTE) uFi (unified WiFi) mobile hotspot device, which can reach a maximum speed of up to 100Mbps and be accessed by 10 users at the same time.

Incorporating second generation Qualcomm LTE chips, the ZTE MF93D provides significant performance enhancements to ZTE’s first generation LTE uFi products including decreased power consumption and improved heat dispersion. It supports dual-band 2.4G/5GHz WiFi networks and mainstream 4G bands in the Europe and Asian-Pacific regions, and can also use 3G and 2G networks, eliminating the cost of upgrading terminals. With increased battery capacity of 2800mAh, users can enjoy ultra speed surfing on the Internet.

As well as improved performance, the ZTE MF93D offers a 1.4-inch touch screen and support for a uFi monitor, allowing users to access the Internet with just one key. Users’ mobile phones can be used to simply and quickly check the status…

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BMW’s 4G LTE Hotspot Idea: Luxury car meet cheap technology

Design With Soul

Image: by BMW

Sometimes we get so used to ‘always connected’. We carry out iPhone 5 or Android Galaxy around all the time, we walk with them, sleep with them, play with them. We happily indulge ourselves to this ubiquitous Internet availability brought to us by our sexy little mobile phone. Yet until recently, this is  mostly limited only to your mobile phones. Or is it?

BMW recently announced a new feature that will turn your beloved automobile into a moving WiFi hotspot. Leveraging the newest 4G/LTE technology, the feature creates a WiFi hotspot in your car and gets Internet access via the 4G/LTE connection.  The feature also makes use of the vehicle’s outside antenna to boost signal strength. Current BMW owners can buy a small accessory and install it in the car to enable the feature.

So you might ask, what’s the difference between this and my MiFi box? Big and small…

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