Cable and phone companies alike are having a "Back to the Future" moment in rolling out huge numbers of Wi-Fi hotspots. Hopefully this project will last longer than the last time carriers talked up large-scale Wi-Fi deployments about a decade ago.

Comcast regulatory and public affairs executive director David Don says the cable world could have at least 500,000 Wi-Fi hotspots around the U.S. in the near future, according to a Multichannel News blog by Gary Arlen. 

Don also cited the ability of Wi-Fi to off-load cellular congestion -- a fascinating statement coming from a cable executive. There's no real love lost between the cable and phone companies. when it comes to wireline broadband competition. When people do "cord cutting" and rely on wireline for voice, that's one less cable triple-play bundle of TV/internet/phone to be sold. Cable has no real play in the cellular world now that WiMax is effectively dead, leaving the industry to offer jury-rigged marketing bundles in cooperation with cellular carriers.

Phone (News - Alert) companies have been down the Wi-Fi hotspot path before, trying to repurpose pay phone infrastructure and real estate for in-city coverage while making a couple of bucks in the process. Turn the clock back a decade to find Verizon (News - Alert) and AT&T and Intel and IBM all cooking up schemes for large-scale Wi-Fi deployments.   Verizon planned to recycle their regional pay phone footprint while Cometa Networks pulled money from Intel Capital and support from AT&T and IBM (News - Alert) for a nationwide network. 

Both efforts dead-ended, with Cometa failing to win business for a large-scale deployment and folding its doors by mid-2004.

Today, the cable industry has lined up biggest players and technology to support Wi-Fi roaming among Bright House Networks, Comcast's Xfinity, Cox (News - Alert), Optimum (Cablevision) and Time-Warner Cable under the brand of CableWi-Fi. At last official count, CableWi-Fi had over 200,000 hotspots nationwide as the end of September 2013.

Cable carrying wireless broadband traffic to off-load cellular networks appears to be a big win at first glance. But appearances can be deceiving. In the on-going settlement wars of who moves the most internet traffic, the more bits flowing on cable networks are less bits flowing onto phone company networks, leading to a stalemate of sorts (at best) where cable and phone companies treat each other as network peers and not charge each other for any excess traffic at the end of the month.  

Cable Wi-Fi may also end up cutting into cellular data profits. If Wi-Fi is "free" from the monthly cable plan and readily available, users can go with minimal monthly -- or no -- data plans, not having to fret about overages.

If that isn't enough to concern cellular CFOs, Google has also its fingers into a nationwide Wi-Fi deployment.   Since Google (News - Alert) is slowly and carefully building out fiber networks around the country and already has its own nationwide network, Google may be tempted to cut out the cable and telco middlemen with broader Wi-Fi coverage.   Google wins because it gets faster response times on its network and services while reducing its settlement-style needs. Phone companies "lose" because Google is less likely to pay for, or pay as much for, a guaranteed quality of service (QoS) offering from a cellular carrier.