3G vs Wi-Fi: A Closer Look and My Take On It.

Moffat Ngacha, S13/20041/09, moffatmn@egerton.ac.ke, Egerton University.

Abstract
3G and Wi-Fi are two technologies that are
widely used to deliver broadband wireless internet services, to portable devices.
This paper seeks to provide a ComputerScientific overview of the two technologies,
show the technologies behind each, provide a
discussion on how each is used, talk on the
merits, demerits, usage, similarities, differences as well as stimulate a discussion on how
Computer Science has helped this to come to
a reality.
3G (Third Generation Mobile) refers to the
collection of third generation mobile technologies that are designed to allow mobile
operators to offer integrated data and voice
services over mobile networks.
Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity) refers to the
802.11b wireless Ethernet standard that was
designed to support wireless LAN (Local
Area Networks).
It remains an open question as to the extent
to which these two technologies are in competition or, perhaps, may be complementary.
The paper also seeks to compare and contrast
the two technologies as well as present a case
study in Kenya.
The paper further seeks to provide a hint for
predictive nature of how the future on mobile
and wireless communication will be like.
Keywords:
Internet; Broadband; Wireless; 3G; Wi-Fi;
WLAN; Telecommunication; Ethernet; LAN

Introduction.

3G and Wi-Fi are the two most important

phenomena to take place in the telecommunication industry in the past two decades in
line with the expansive growth in mobile telephony and internet services. These two entirely different worlds are now converging.
The union of these two offers the benefit of
the Internet multimedia with the flexibility
and mobility of wireless, with the main idea
being to provide high speed internet connection without the restriction of boundaries.
Its important to note that we also have other
technologies in broadband wireless internet
services such WiMAX, Satellite, Bluetooth,
GPRS, EDGE, 2G and 4G, which are not
covered by the scope of this paper.
3G offers a top-down, vertically-integrated,
service-provider approach to delivering wireless internet access, while Wi-Fi offers an enduser-centric, decentralized approach to service provisioning. It represents a natural evolution and extension of the business models
of existing mobile providers.
Wi-Fis approach leverages on the large installed base of WLAN infrastructure already
in place, as well as what is still going on.
On 3G, billions of shillings of investment are
made in order to obtain licenses and to purchase expensive equipment to support high
speed data rates. Equipment manufacturers
are developing base stations and handsets for
large scale deployments for 3G services.
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On the other hand, Wi-Fi operates in the

unlicensed ISM band which does not require
huge amount of investment, at least to acquire licenses. Equipment is cheap as compared to 3G base stations. However, it does
require deployment to be done over a large
scale.

versation while driving along a highway at

over 100 km/h.
To support the service, mobile operators maintain a network of interconnected and overlapping mobile base stations that hand-off customers as those
customers move among adjacent cells.
Development of 3G
Development efforts were started in 1988
when International Telecommunications
Union (ITU) defined requirements for 3G.
In 1992, World Administrative Radio Conference (WARC) defined frequencies for
Future Public Land Mobile Communications
which is now known as IMT- 2000. In 1998
third generation partnership project (3GPP)
which is an agreement of collaboration
between a number of telecommunications
bodies like Association of Radio Industries
Association (ARIB Japan), China Communications Standards Association (CCSA),
Alliance for Telecommunications Industry
Solutions (ATIS) and Telecommunication
Technology Committee (TTC), was formed.
According to 3GPP, The original scope of
3GPP was to produce globally applicable
Technical Specifications and Technical Reports for a 3G mobile system based on
evolved GSM core networks and the radio access technologies that they support.
Afterwards, GSM, GPRS and EDGE came
into place, which eventually brought to the
3G networks.
The evolution of 3G
The first mobile services were analog. Although mobile services began to emerge in
the 1940s, the first mass-market mobile services in the US were based on the advanced

3G.

Third generation mobile telephony (3G), was

designed to provide mobile phone users access
to anything, anywhere and anytime.
The 3G technology is provided by mobile telephone providers who operate on their own
wireless networks, using a licensed spectrum
to provide wireless telephone coverage over
some relatively large continuous geographic
service area.
In Kenya, Safaricom, which is the largest mobile telephone provider with at least 17 million subscribers and a subsidiary of the global
Vodacom Corporation, has over 70% 3G network coverage, all over Kenya.
Up-to-date figures of the same can be obtained from the Communication Commission
of Kenya (CCK) website.
From a users perspective, the key feature of
mobile service is that it offers ubiquitous and
continuous coverage. That means that a consumer can carry on a mobile telephone con2

mobile phone service (AMPS) technology.

This is what is commonly referred to as firstgeneration (1G) wireless.
In the 1990s, mobile services based on digital mobile technologies ushered in the second generation (2G) of wireless that we have
today. In the US, these were referred to as
personal communication systems (PCS) and
used technologies such as time division multiple access (TDMA), code division multiple
access (CDMA) and global system for mobilecommunications (GSM). From 1995 to 1997,
the FCC auctioned off PCS spectrum licenses
in the 18501990MHz band. CDMA and
TDMA were deployed in various parts of the
US, while GSM was deployed as the common
standard in Europe.
The 3G mobile technologies support higher
bandwidth digital communications.
The chief focus of wireless mobile services
has been voice telephony. However, in recent
years there has been growing interest in data
services as well. While data services are available over AMPS systems, these are limited to
quite low data rates (10 kbps). Higher speed
data and other advanced telephone services
are more readily supported over the digital
2G systems.
The 2G systems also support larger numbers
of subscribers and so helped alleviate the capacity problems faced by older AMPS systems. Nevertheless, the data rates supportable over 2G systems are still quite limited,
offering only between 10 and 20 kbps.
To expand the range and capability of data
services that can be supported by digital
mobile systems, service providers upgraded
their networks to one of the 3G technologies.

These can support data rates from 384 kbps

up to 2 Mbps.

Wi-Fi.

Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity) is one of the most

established world-wide networking standard
which incorporates the use of radio waves to
link computers and other network devices together. Its the common name used to refer to IEEE 802.11 standard for wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN). Its mainly used
to connect devices without the use of wires
and allows them to share network resources
such as printers, file storage and broadband
internet connection. Wi-Fi provides broadband to Wi-Fi enabled devices by using back
haul Internet connection. Wi-Fi operates in
2.4/5 GHz unlicensed ISM (Industrial, Scientific and Medical) band.
Wireline local area networks (LANs) emerged
in the early 1980s as a way to allow collections of PCs, terminals, and other distributed
computing devices to share resources and peripherals such as printers, access servers, or
shared storage devices. One of the most popular LAN technologies was Ethernet. Over
the years, the IEEE has approved a succession of Ethernet standards to support higher
capacity LANs over a diverse array of media.
The 802.11 x families of Ethernet standards
are for wireless LANs.
Wi-Fi LANs operate using unlicensed spectrum in the 2.4GHz band. Most typically,
WLANs are deployed in a distributed way
to offer last-hundred-meter connectivity to a
wireline backbone corporate or campus net3

work. Typically, the WLANs are imple- outs.

mented as part of a private network. The Case study of Wi-Fi in Kenya.
base station equipment is owned and oper1. Pay-as-you-go Wi-fi
ated by the end-user community as part of
the corporate enterprise, campus, or governAn interesting perspective of paid Wi-Fi
ment network. In most cases, use of the netin Kenya is Wazi-WiFi. This is a paid
work is free to the end-users.
service that allows you to access wireless internet across different access zones,
known as hotspots, where you can use
the voucher purchased to access internet
on a particular device.
The recharge vouchers can be purchased
by use of credit cards and mobile money
transfers services such as M-Pesa.
2. Commercial Wi-fi
This is mostly in use in public institutions of higher learning like universities and tertiary colleges. This is provided freely to students who only have to
authenticate using a specified username
and password. This method is useful in
helping students and scholars to conduct
their research activities, while reducing
the cost incurred.

Fig. 2 An example of a Wi-Fi network

Although each base station can support connections only over a range of a hundred meters, it is possible to provide contiguous coverage over a wider area by using multiple
base stations. A number of corporate business and university campuses have deployed
such contiguous WLANs. Still, the WLAN
The wi-fi is however not free par se, since
technology was not designed to support highthe users pay for it in one way or another,
speed hand-off associated with users moving
either from school fees or taxes collected
between base station coverage areas (i.e., the
by the government and channeled back
problem addressed by mobile systems).
for purposes of promoting education.
In contrast to mobile, WLANs were principally focused on supporting data communi3. Wi-fi hotspots in buses, trains and aircations. However, with the growing interports.
est in supporting real-time services such as
voice and video over IP networks, it is possi- There has been an upcoming trend in modble to support voice telephony services over ern buses and trains providing Wi-fi to their
WLANs such as Skype and Google+ Hang- customers when they are travelling. This is a
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way of attracting more customers as well as

proving comfort to the customers.
In airports, the local authorities provide wifi to passengers boarding or arriving at the
airports to easen their communication as well
as a sign of welcome to the country.

2. Both offer broad band data services.

Both 3G and Wi-Fi support broadband
data service, although the data rate offered by Wi-Fi is quite higher than that
of 3G services. Both offers sufficient
bandwidth to support a good number of
services such as Skype, Viber, Google+
Hangouts and much more.

Similarities between 3G
and Wi-Fi

3. Both consume a lot of power on

portable devices.
When 3G or Wi-Fi are left on for a while
in smartphones such as those running on
Android and iOS, they rate of power consumption is quite high and most manufacturers recommending turning off the
3G or Wi-Fi when not in use.

1. Both are wireless.

Both technologies are wireless which:
(a) Avoids the need to install cable drops
to each device when compared to wire
line alternatives.

Since the smartphones have a short battery life, this makes one not to fully enjoy the services offered by both the two
technologies.

(b) Facilitates mobility since wireless

infrastructure may be deployed more
rapidly than wire line alternatives to respond to new market opportunities or
changing demand.

If both are turned off when not in

use, the battery consumption on smartphones is relatively low.

This includes both the ability to move

devices around having to move cables
and furniture, which is known as local
4. Both are access technologies.
mobility. It is one of the key advantages of WLANs over traditional wireline
Both 3G and Wi-Fi are access or edgeLANs.
network technologies which mean that they
It also includes the ability to stay contin- both offer alternatives to the last-kilometre
uously connected over wider serving ar- wireline network.
eas, one of the key advantages of mobile Beyond the last kilometre, they both rely on
systems such as 3G. WLANs trade the similar network connections and transmission
range of coverage for higher bandwidth, support infrastructure.
making them more suitable for local hot For 3G, the wireless link is from the end user
spot service.
device to the cell base station which may
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be at a distance of up to a few kilometres,

and then dedicated wireline facilities to interconnect base stations to the carriers backbone network and ultimately to the Internet
cloud. The local backhaul infrastructure of
the cell provider may be offered over facilities owned by the wireless provider (e.g. microwave links) or leased from the local mobile telephone service provider (e.g. Safaricom or Jamii Telecom-JTL). Although 3G is
conceived of as an end-to-end service, it is
possible to view it as an access service.

Differences between 3G
and Wi-Fi.

1. Spectrum policy and management

Third generation (3G) and other mobile technologies use licensed spectrum,
while Wi-Fi uses unlicensed shared spectrum. The implication of this is on the
cost of service; quality of service (QoS)
and congestion management; and the industry structure.
To begin with, the initial cost of acquiring a spectrum license from the Communication Commission represents a substantial share of the capital costs of deploying 3G services. This cost is not
faced by Wi-Fi which uses the shared
2.4GHz unlicensed, shared spectrum.
The cost of a spectrum license represents
a substantial entry barrier, which makes
most companies not to venture into the
3G services-provision business.

For Wi-Fi, the wireless link is a hundred meters from the end-user device to the base station. The base station is then connected
either into the wireline LAN or enterprise
network infrastructure or to a wireline access line to a carriers backbone network and
then eventually to the Internet. For example,
Wi-Fi is increasingly finding application as a
home LAN technology to enable sharing of
DSL or cable modem residential broadband
access services among multiple PCs in a home
or to enable within-home mobility. Wi-Fi is
generally viewed as an access technology, not
as an end-to-end service.

Next, while the licensed spectrum is expensive, it does have the advantage of
facilitating QoS management. With licensed spectrum, the licensee is protected from interference from other service providers. This means that the licensee can enforce centralized allocation
of scarce frequencies to adopt the congestion management strategy that is most
appropriate.

Because both technologies are access technologies, we must always consider the role
of backbone wireline providers that provide
connectivity to the rest of the Internet and
support transport within the core of the network. These wireline providers may also offer
competing wireline access solutions.

In sharp contrast, the unlicensed spectrum used by Wi-Fi imposes strict power
limits on users (i.e., responsibility not
to interfere with other users) and forces
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users to accept interference from others.

This makes it easier for a 3G provider to
market a service with a predictable level
of service and to support delay-sensitive
services such as real-time telephony.

This allows users to buy wi-fi internet

tokens which can be used to access wi-fi
internet from a variety of hotspots available in the country. A hotspot is an area
close to an access point whereby the data
bandwidth and rate is much high.

In contrast, while a Wi-Fi network can

address the problem of congestion associated with users on the same WiFi network, it cannot control potential interference from other Wi-Fi service
providers or other RF sources that are
sharing the unlicensed spectrum (both
of which will appear as elevated background noise). This represents a serious
challenge to supporting delay-sensitive
services and to scaling service in the face
of increasing competition from multiple
and overlapping service provider.

3. Security
One great advantage of 3G over Wi-Fi
is that 3G offers better support for secure/private communications than does
Wi-Fi.
Protecting your data over a wireless
network is important to businesses and
home users alike. It is a good idea to
setup your wireless connection with some
level of protection. The most common
security is WEP (Wired Equivalent Protocol) and allows a user to set a password
of different lengths to secure your network. It adds some security, but a white
hacker can easily break the encryption.
As a result, WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) was created and offers a higher level
of security than WEP by combining authentication and encryption.

2. Service/business model
Payment for 3G network is quite easy to
be conducted since the data used is usually deducted as airtime values from your
device (smartphone or tablet). This allows the mobile service provider to have
complete control of how much data you
can access depending on how much one
has purchased.

Regardless of the security you choose,

all of the computers and connected devices must use the same password or preshared key to be on the network.

On the other hand, Wi-Fi does not have

a well-developed way of charging for the
services.

4. Speed of Connection

Recently, companies like Google and Pesapal have teamed up to provide wi-fi top
up cards which enable a user to access internet everywhere. The project is known
as Wazi Wifi , which has been covered in a previous chapter of this paper.

Data rate supported by 3G:

2 Mbps (Indoors, maximum speed of upto 10 km/h)
384 Kbps (Sub Urban, maximum speed
of up-to 120 km/h)
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144 Kbps (Rural, maximum speed of upto 500 km/h)

limit the number of firms that compete

in the market. There may be more than
enough competition among existing mobile providers to preclude the exercise of
market power.

Data rate supported by Wi-Fi:

(a) Up to 54 Mbps

Secondly, if both 3G and Wi-Fi survive,

then the diversity of viable networking infrastructure strategies will be conducive to greater facilities-based competition.

(b) Better data rate at a lower price as

compare to 3G.
5. With Sim card or not
3G will only work when the sim is in the
phone, while WIFI can work with no sim in
Wi-Fi hotspots.

Next, the success of the Wi-Fi service

model could help unlock the substantial investment in private networking infrastructure. This would require adding
the necessary business functionality and
technical support to enable base station
owners to bill for Wi-Fi service. Once
this is developed, the opportunity to create novel new ways to leverage the existing infrastructure investment will be
increased.

Some implications for

Industry structure and
the public policy.

Based on preceding sections, we hereby offer

some views and speculations on possible implications on the industry structure, the public policy and competition.

Lastly, if only the Wi-Fi service model

survives, then we would expect this to
be inherently more competitive because
of the lower entry barriers for setting
up local access services. The use of unlicensed spectrum means that property
rights over the spectrum cannot be used
to exclude potential entrants, although
if congestion is not properly managed
could be just as effective in limiting competition.

1. Wi-Fi is good for competition

It appears that the success of Wi-Fi and
other wireless local access alternatives
will probably be good for local competition.
First, if only 3G survives, then it is less
likely that we will see non-vertically integrated, decentralized service provisioning. The high entry costs associated
with acquiring licensed spectrum and the
need to construct a geographically larger
network to begin offering service will

2. Spectrum policy is key

The spectrum policy plays a critical role
on how the wireless future evolves. One
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of the key distinguishing features between 3G and Wi-Fi is the use of licensed
versus unlicensed spectrum.

the Wi-Fi providers, based on the asymmetry entry costs associated with mobile
networks, as well as the natural ability of
mobile providers to implement bundled
services on their networks.

Continued progress towards creating secondary spectrum markets will benefit

both 3G and Wi-Fi models. For 3G, secondary markets would allow more flexible management of property rights. Secondary markets would allow spectrum
to be reallocated more flexibly to higher
value uses and could improve dynamic
efficiency.

4. Success of Wi-Fi is potentially good

for multimedia content
Multimedia content benefits from higher
bandwidth services and as such, the ability to support higher speed wireless access may encourage the development of
broadband multimedia content.

For Wi-Fi, the emergence of spectrum

markets may make it possible to adopt a
suitable mechanism for addressing congestion issues. If implemented in the
unlicensed band where Wi-Fi currently
operates, this would require additional
policy changes to implement a marketbased resource allocation process. It
may be easier to implement such a mechanism in a WLAN technology that could
operate in a licensed band where there
are clear property rights.

On the other hand, the lack of a clear

business model for deploying broadband
services over a Wi-Fi network may raise
concerns for how content would be paid
for as well as the digital rights management issues.

5. Technical progress favours a heterogeneous future

3. Wi-Fi and 3G can complement each

other

Recent studies show that Wi-Fi can easily be integrated into 3G networks. Since
each of the technologies has distinct advantages over the other, putting the two Current technical progress shows that a hettogether would allow a mobile service erogeneous future is favoured by both the Wiprovider to offer a wider set of more valu- Fi and the 3G networks.
able services to the consumer.
An implementation of the two would allow
It would be easier for mobile service taking advantages offered by both technoloproviders to adopt this, as opposed to gies.
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Conclusion

3G and Wi-Fi are the two of the most important phenomena to take place in the telecommunication industry, in regards to wireless internet services.
In this paper, we provided an understanding
on the technology of how the two operate,
their developments among others.
A case study of use of Wazi-wifi in Kenya
shows that wi-fi can be of much benefit so as
to offload the internet access from the mobile
telecommunication channels as well as merging the two which would lead to more efficient and timely delivery of broadband internet services.
The goal of this analysis is to explore two
divergent world views for the future of wireless access and to speculate on the likely success and possible interactions between the
two technologies in the future.
We also expect 3G mobile providers to integrate Wi-Fi technology into their networks.
Thus, we expect these technologies to be
complementary in their most successful massmarket deployments.
As the numbers of hot zones and hot spots
are increasing, it seems that Wi-Fi will be
a big rival of third generation mobile phone
network in the near future.

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