Public WLAN booming in APAC: Gartner

BANGALORE: Public wireless LAN services are finally picking up speed in the Asia-Pacific after two years of struggling to get off the ground, according to Gartner Dataquest latest report, "Public WLAN Services Finally Picks Up Speed."

According to the report, in at least six major markets i.e. Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan ,there is a wider choice of operators, service coverage is improving rapidly, and pricing has come down to realistic levels. The service is currently led by incumbent carriers, even though most of them are not first movers in this sector.

"With big carriers getting into the game, they bring better service coverage and more affordable pricing, especially for the consumer market," said, Gartner Dataquest's, industry analyst, Alayne Wong ."The downside is that some start-ups are already falling out of the market or scaling back their operations, leaving the field to carriers."

Most operators now offer reasonable service coverage in major public places, like airports, commercial buildings, and food and beverage outlets, some with hundreds of hot spots. Of all the operators, KT is the most aggressive, with plans to roll out 16,000 hot spots by end 2003. "However, none of the vendors provides truly ubiquitous coverage, even within a city, but it’s a good start," said Wong.

Pricing has come down to affordable levels in many countries as carriers are beginning to target the mass market. In Korea, the low usage fee costs $2.60 per hour, capped at $10.60 a day, which keeps the service cheap and predictable. In Singapore, it costs $0.12 per minute pay per use, which makes it really attractive for random ad-hoc users.

Since the service is still in its early days, the subscriber numbers and revenues are still very small, and it’s not clear whether it will become a major revenue generator in the near term. Already, some carriers are looking to WLAN as a strategy to boost other core services, such as broadband access and cellular, by offering this as a complementary value-added service at low rates. This will make it even harder for specialist WLAN players to stay in the game.