Wireless access technology in Japan is set to change. According to findings from NTT, Tokyo has approximately five million wireless LAN access points operating within its 23 wards. From a coverage point of view, this is 20 times more access points than are needed today.
Wireless traffic in the city is expected to increase by approximately 80 times by 2030, compared to 2020. The increase can lead to congestion and connection failures. To prevent this, it is necessary not only to improve individual Wi-Fi systems, but also to secure radio resources for processing all wireless traffic.
Of course, this can be solved by installing more radio base stations as wireless access facilities on a large scale, but building enough facilities to accommodate the increased traffic will be expensive. Unnecessary, given that the only barrier to using the existing surplus of access points would be an absence of profit incentive.
Private wireless access systems used by individuals and businesses, such as wireless LAN and local 5G, must be used more efficiently. When it comes to Wi-Fi sharing, the common problems include:
- How to provide an incentive to wireless access providers
- How to ensure security in relation to sharing
- How to reduce the costs incurred in system construction
Beyond these, other problems arise, even if wireless access sharing can be achieved. For example, if wireless access systems owned by a number of parties are shared, such systems will be individually operated rather than centrally controlled, meaning that users will end up connecting to wireless access systems with good communication quality in a concentrated manner. generate congestion.
It leads to several problems: a drop in usage efficiency and a deterioration in the communication quality of wireless access in general.
First successful shared wireless access points
Regardless of these roadblocks, NTT went ahead with an experiment to test the effectiveness of network sharing. The scheme starts by asking operators of Wi-Fi access points or other connections if they are open to sharing their bandwidth and allowing casual internet users to connect, in return for a share of the revenue from those connections.
Web users search for available networks, and as they connect, a contract is executed that allows a link to be created. That contract would use the Ethereum Proof of Authority to verify identities and initiate the back-end billing arrangements before allowing registered users and devices to join private networks.
All participating network nodes “use blockchain ledger information to equalize the number of terminal connections in a decentralized and autonomous manner and improve communication quality,” according to NTT’s announcement of its efforts. These tests were conducted on “a mix of wireless access systems with different administrators.”
If it works at scale, NTT estimates Tokyo won’t need more Wi-Fi access points or private 5G cells, even as demand for connectivity increases. This means no corresponding increase in energy consumption – which is an economic and environmentally friendly result.
NTT has not yet explained how it isolates transient connections from traffic created by an access point’s owner or operator. Customers may want this information before sharing a connection, and the scheme will have to overcome other security objections about the dangers of using public networks; not even blockchain can erase all these problems.
Nevertheless, in a global news, the first test of sharing technology using blockchain was a success. In theory, the eradication of individualized access points could be adopted globally, at least in cities, saving the money that would have been spent on building wireless access points subject to demand.
