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Public Wi-Fi gains momentum

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Soma Tah
New Update

BEIJING, CHINA: A recent report on the Wi-Fi hotspot market published by the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA)'s revealed that tier-1 mobile operators expect 22 percent of all additional data capacity added during 2013-2014 to come from Wi-Fi offload. By 2018, Wi-Fi offload is predicted to contribute 20 percent of additional mobile data capacity plus a further 21 percent will come from small cells with integrated Wi-Fi.

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This shows how important data offload is to mobile operators, accounting for an average of 20 percent of data traffic, up to 80 percent in densely populated areas such as transport hubs and cafes. Within homes and businesses offload levels are 50 percent to 60 percent.

The survey also highlighted that 51 percent of respondents, 56 percent of those being operators, are more confident about investing in Wi-Fi to supplement cellular than they had been a year earlier. Renewed confidence can be attributed to increased hotspot deployments and more ambitious business plans announced by some carriers, as well as the vast improvements made to Wi-Fi through enhanced roaming agreements and WBA initiatives such as Next Generation Hotspot (NGH).

The research company, Maravedis-Rethink, which compiled the report, forecasts a steady annual increase in hotspots deployed from 5.2m in 2012 to 10.5m in 2018. Of the hotspot owners, 27 respondents have networks of over 1,000 locations and six have more than one million.

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By contrast, almost 10 percent of those supporting roaming have access to networks of over one million locations. Operators are expanding the access they provide rapidly via roaming agreements and as the process becomes simplified and standardized, this trend will continue to accelerate.

Monetization strategies also came up as an important consideration with the most significant being Wi-Fi offload, closely followed by location-based services such as targeted marketing, and enterprise applications.

With regards to NGH deployments, 78 percent of those planning to launch an NGH network will do so by end of 2015. Over half the respondents stated that the most pressing driver for NGH investment was to increase offload from cellular networks, closely followed by the need to increase customer satisfaction, increase revenues and facilitate seamless roaming.

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Shrikant Shenwai, CEO of the WBA, said: "This research shows an increasingly positive attitude towards public Wi-Fi which is largely thanks to the strength of the ecosystem and the technical and commercial progress to make NGH deployments possible. The focus has to be on continuing efforts to cement NGH as a commercial reality and defining a new ‘carrier grade' of Wi-Fi that will bring significant benefits to the industry."

"This year's survey doesn't just show major growth ahead for public Wi-Fi deployments, but a strong focus on overall customer experience rather than just speed and convenience. Quality of experience will drive a variety of new business models based on Wi-Fi, and two of the essential enablers are being driven by the WBA - global roaming and Next Generation Hotspot," said Caroline Gabriel, research director, Maravedis-Rethink.

 

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