Verizon Hunts for Wi-Fi Small Cell Smarts

Verizon Wireless is looking for Wi-Fi talent to help it integrate the wireless Lan technology with LTE, small cells and new 802.11 initiatives, despite its disdain for large-scale public hotspot networks.

Verizon is currently advertising for a "Distinguished Wi-Fi Engineer" in New Jersey to help with its Wi-Fi deployments in large sporting arenas and with future integration between 4G and Wi-Fi.

This would include:

The ad also hints that Verizon might add native support for Wi-Fi calling as it develops its next-generation 802.11 plans. The job calls for the engineer to define best practices for Verizon applications that could support "VoIP (IMS) services over WiFi."

Verizon has not offered Wi-Fi calling as a feature before, although users can, of course, download third-party apps such as Tango to make calls over Wi-Fi.

One thing that subscribers can apparently be sure of, however, is that Verizon will not be following AT&T Inc. down the massive public Wi-Fi route. Verizon CFO Fran Shammo was asked about Wi-Fi during the operator's second-quarter earnings call in July.

"From a Wi-Fi perspective, obviously we always like people to offload when they are in their home in a secured Wi-Fi network," he said. "But ... major massive public Wi-Fi is not interesting for our customers at least in this point in time from a security standpoint."

The operator does run Wi-Fi in a number of stadia to help with offload at major sporting events, though we're wondering if they really need that kind of capacity for Detroit Lions games...

— Dan Jones, Site Editor, Light Reading Mobile