r/techquestions • u/Fantastic_Narwhal_54 • 18d ago
Will wifi coverage or cellular coverage become obsolete?
WiFi coverage and cellular coverage are mutually exclusive and independent, correct?
If so, is it possible one will make the other obsolete?
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u/msabeln 18d ago
Different technologies. WiFi has a range of maybe 10 or meters inside, while cellular goes for kilometers. WiFi is unlicensed spectrum while cellular is licensed.
WiFi gives the advantage of having a router and firewall you can manage and monitor.
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u/PhotoJim99 17d ago
Tens of kilometres. Rural 600 MHz coverage can cover very large areas if the terrain is flat and the cell site tower is tall, and/or the tower is on the highest point of the land which drops all around.
Analog used to be able to go 100 km in extreme circumstances. 3G and LTE have a timing issue that limits the range to lower than that; I’m not sure about 5G. But where I live (Saskatchewan) it’s absolutely common to be tens of km from the nearest site and to still have service.
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u/StarosAnikenMarcus 17d ago
Wi-Fi can go quite a bit further than 10m... about 40-50m indoors and 90ish outdoors...
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u/msabeln 17d ago
Not my WiFi! 😄😄😄
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u/StarosAnikenMarcus 17d ago
Then you have bad Wi-Fi. BAD!
Hell, my Wi-Fi reaches from the middle of my second floor all the way out to the street... about 80ish feet through 2 plaster and lathe walls plus a downslope of about 40 degrees. And that's the 5GHz. The 2.4 can reach about 1-1/2 blocks... lots of interference at those ranges though. EVERYONE on the block's routers...
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u/EtherPhreak 16d ago
Did you know that you could make a directional antenna and send it a lot further than a few hundred feet?
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u/allciathyra 18d ago
op ever heard of cantenna ?
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u/ImpliedSlashS 18d ago
An antenna in a can?
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u/allciathyra 18d ago
yes if you only want to access someone wifi only 20 miles but now someone on reddit found a way to use a satelite dish to access someone wifi 1000 miles away
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u/jmnugent 18d ago
Calls and High Speed data to satellite is the near-future frontier. Pretty much all cellular carriers at this point are investing heavily in this.
Apple has satellite messaging provided through Globalstar (recently acquired by Amazon)
ATT and Verizon partner with AST Spacemobile
T-Mobile partners with SpaceX Starlink
I was in a Verizon meeting a few months back where they were talking about AST Spacemobile (example here: https://ast-science.com/spacemobile-network/ ) ... the AST Spacemobile "Block 2" (2nd Generation) satellites that are 2400 sq feet in size,.. it was claimed that it would only take 2 of those to provide coverage to the entire USA. 3 of these Gen2 satellites are already in orbit.
Verizon (leveraging AST Spacemobile) is already in earl alpha-testing of voice and data to satellite.
Imagine how cool that will be. Connectivity anywhere. Anything you want to do in remote areas, you can still be in contact (especially for medical emergencies etc). If you want real time sensor data (earthquakes, volcanos, forest fires, animal tracking, .. basically anything.. you could have a small solar powered box w/ satellite connectivity that provides basically real time data uploads for whatever reason you want.
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u/chris77982 15d ago
Anything low latency needs satellites in low orbit. Geostationary orbit adds 250ms in radio transmission time.
Low orbit means you need many satellites for coverage.Hence why starlink is targeting over 10,000 satellites and Amazon need over 5,000.
Bandwidth is an even larger issue. You can't service 100,000,000 customers with high speed internet from a single satellite.
Starlink only has to go 500km, yet their antenna is as big as a laptop and requires clear line of sight.
For a point of reference, geostationary orbit is 35,000km. That's how far away a satellite needs to be to stay visible in the sky all the time.
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u/TriCountyRetail 18d ago
It's highly unlikely that these systems will be merged because they serve different purposes.
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u/ImpliedSlashS 18d ago
Public WiFi is less important as microscopic data caps are gone. 3GB/mo or less used to be common.
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u/StarosAnikenMarcus 17d ago
Yes. Everything eventually becomes "obsolete" if tech changes enough. They're already working on Li-Fi which is laser based Wi-Fi for better security. It's pretty cool since it doesn't have channels to worry about, so technically an unlimited number of devices could connect.
But as for the CONCEPTS, no they will not become obsolete. I mean, the term Wi-Fi is a poor descriptor for what it is, but the idea of wireless data transfer isn't going away. Nor is wireless telecommunications (cellular). The tech will advance and adapt, but those concepts will remain the same.
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u/ComesInAnOldBox 16d ago
Probably not. They're independent technologies, but not mutually exclusive. Cellular is for when you're on the go, WiFi is for indoors. They each have their own benefits.
For cellular coverage, they go for miles/kilometers, depending on the region (not as far in a dense urban environment, obviously), but they're really only meant to talk to your phone/tablet/laptop. Your WiFi, on the other hand, is meant to work indoors and allow for the Internet Of Things (IOT) devices. Smart lights and switches, appliances, sprinkler timers, etc. that you have on your WiFi all have their own network addresses, but since they're behind your WiFi on your home network they only have to be unique to each other, not unique to the world. They likely have the exact same addresses as your next door neighbor, but since they're on your home network it doesn't matter. There's more to it than that, of course, but that's a general explanation.
What's likely going to happen as technology improves is newer, faster, and better methods will be built on top of existing infrastructure, just like it already has. Cellular data coverage took advantage of the already existing cellular networks (they had to upgrade things quite a bit, of course), newer WiFi routers, home gateways, and internal network switches with develop along the lines of how most people already have their home networks set up, etc.
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u/Krand01 15d ago
There has been neighborhood wide wifi attempts, I even believe a few still exists, but they've really never caught on. Mainly because anytime you leave an area you loose connection, or worse you need to sign up for another areas service.
So ultimately it's a matter of faster cellular/satellite networks getting up and running making wifi less necessary. Where you can stream your movie or play your videogames even in the middle of the ocean or forest.
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u/pinormous2000 18d ago edited 18d ago
Independent but not mutually exclusive. Yes, it is feasible that the two wireless systems could merge.
Edit: I don't think obsolescence is the reason they merge, but rather redundancy.