Cisco announced today at Mobile World Congress its industry-first, carrier-grade, end-to-end Wi-Fi infrastructure to deliver ‘next-gen’ hotspots which ‘handshake’ between each other and allow users to roam freely without losing their data connections.

Murali Nemani Cisco’s Senior Director of Service Provider Mobility Marketing, told CBR that this is the world first deployment of Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) technology alongside the release of its new Small Cell Gateway for operators. This will manage subscriber and service information, integrating 2G/3G and 4G LTE networks with Wi-Fi/femtocell networks seamlessly.

Small cells are both licensed radio (low-powered indoor/outdoor base stations with limited range) and unlicensed radio (carrier-grade Wi-Fi) technologies that act as part of an integrated network offering.

This means mobile devices will ‘handshake’ across mobile networks and wi-fi hotspots similar to how a 3G network operates now – in that your unique user ID, which recognizes you anywhere, hands you off between any compatible network seamlessly.

It’s invisibility to the end user is what makes it key – all the work is done on the back end. A non-tech savvy user can be on their business wi-fi, stroll out onto the street and check email through the 3G, before sitting in a Starbucks watching Youtube, without touching the settings on their phone.

This means the end user will not need to continuously log in and out of mobile networks, and/or switching wi-fi on and off on their devices.

"You can roam between hotpots and that’s a huge breakthrough. You no longer have to restart your [internet] session and re-enter your credentials every time you move to a new location. The network just finds you and tells which SSID is the appropriate for you – it just puts you on the network with the right security… and its carrier grade security we’re talking about here," Semani said.

Cisco assures us, given that it adheres to the Hotspot 2.0 specification, that rival technologies will also be compatible, once they launch.

"That’s the beauty of this system. We’re complying with a standards based implementation – the Hotspot 2.0 specification. We helped write the spec, so we were the pioneers here tying the operating systems together between the operators and the handset manufacturers," he said.

"[The mobile operators’] handsets all now support our client software. It also doesn’t have to be an all Cisco solution. If this technology was truly going to change the way people use their devices, it really had to be ubiquitous. It had to be able to work across multi-vendor environments."

For those already running Cisco hotspots, ‘the majority’ of these operators, ‘around 12 million’ will be compatible with the new technology through a simple software update said Nemani.

The speeds of these hotspots will remain unchanged. Cisco’s tech uses the 802.11u spec but is backward compatible with 802.11n and g.

The mobile operators on the backend then just need to employ the new small-cell gateway. For those using Cisco’s ASR5000 packet core, which operators such as Vodafone and Verizon currently use, they will just need to add a software module which will integrate the wifi funcationlity.

The end user simply runs a free update on their phone.

Google and Samsung are client partners on the handset end, and the first commercial deployment on the operator end is Shaw Cable in Canada.

Shaw purchased 4G spectrum last year, but never deployed it. The company instead developed a city wide wi-fi network instead, which currently gives all their broadband customers wi-fi across Calgary as part of their subscriber package.

PCCW in Hong Kong will follow next as the first commercial deployment in Asia.

Semani said Cisco is currently working on a similar project with BT in London, but wouldn’t go into specifics. There will be an announcement concerning London shortly, he said.

The new technology will also help the struggling telcos offload data from their already struggling mobile data networks, as well as effectively increasing coverage inside buildings – a traditional failing of mobile cellular reception.

"We are predicting 18x growth in mobile data traffic between 2011 and 2016," said Semani.

"This has a tremendous impact on how telcos manage their spectrum. It’s much better to pass as much of this off to private wifi as possible – which now operates like a cell network anyway. Instead of deploying more towers, [telcos] can use Wi-Fi to supplement the macro-cell environment."

Cisco will be announcing the new hotspot technology at 3PM today at Mobile World Congress.

Cisco’s announcement:

Cisco Small Cell Gateway Solution for Wi-Fi/femtocell
– Integrated packet core for macro radio, Wi-Fi and femtocell

Next-Generation Hotspot available to software upgrade majority of 12 million Cisco Access Points
– Seamless roaming and secure authentication between operators
– Validated as 1st HotSpot 2.0 solution in market by WBA
– Deployed: PCCW, True;
– Trials: SMART/BT/PT; Partners: Google/Samsung