Wi-Fi Use Climbs
Right now there are 1.3 million public Wi-Fi spots around the world, but Informa reckons that’s going to jump to 5.8 million by 2015 with tablets and smartphones driving the deployments. This is not surprising to find, as Android over takes the iPhone and iPad. Since purchasing my own Android phone I can say I am setting at my desktop 30% less.
Those figures don’t include the 4.5 million “community” hotspots – privately owned but publically shared – the 5.8 million hotspots up and running in 2015 will be available to anyone who wants to pay, but most will be run by mobile network operators who want to offload as much of their data traffic as possible.
Informa, which compiled the data for the Wireless Broadband Alliance, spoke to 259 network operators around the world, and discovered that tablet computers already account for a tenth of hotspot connections, while smartphones account for 36 per cent and laptops less than half (6 per cent are unaccounted for).
Network operators are very happy to offload traffic onto Wi-Fi, so China Mobile is planning to deploy more than a million hotspots in the next few years, and Japan’s KDDI has announced plans for another 100,000 within the next six months. In the UK things get a bit weird thanks to our regulatory environment, but we too are heading in that direction.
The Wireless Broadband Alliance is pushing its single-sign-on standard to make it easier for devices to authenticate themselves, so users can roam onto Wi-Fi connections without having to ask, though if they’re switching regulatory environments that might come as a shock.
Getting seamless roaming means adding the capability to handsets and access-point hardware, which is what the Alliance hopes will be promoted by this report.
