Europe will have more wi-fi hotspots than the US by 2007, according to a report on Netimperative. The site quotes research by US-based Radicati Group as predicting that Europe will take 38% of the world’s 447,000 hotspots by 2007, whilst the US houses 34%.
Wi-fi (or WLAN) hotspots are areas where users can connect wirelessly to a computer network, such as the internet. Until 2007, the North American is expected to wi-fi, with a 64% share of the world’s hotspots. Netimperative says that the research also predicts that hotspots will appear in places such as libraries and fire department vehicles.
The European market A separate report from Frost & Sullivan (F&S) finds that many European operators are viewing wi-fi as an exciting opportunity, despite the fact that there are still a number of technical and business challenges to be overcome before the market will flourish.
“It is clear that a limited investment can yield significant revenue generation opportunities in the European WLAN hotspots market. However, this can only be achieved by selecting the most appropriate business models. The limited success of commercial services in North America has already demonstrated that the right mix of customer segmentation, location, pricing and service offering needs to be found,” says F&S.
The adoption of wireless network services in Europe is being led by the Scandinavia region, first and foremost spearheaded by SoneraTelia’s Telia HomeRun and Sonera wGate services. Other pioneering companies in this marketplace include BT Openzone, T-Mobile (Deutsche Telekom) and Swisscom.
One of the biggest issues for hotspot operators, says F&S, is maintaining a decent level of service. Where hotspot services are complementary or free of charge, the user cannot expect particularly high levels of reliability. However, if an end-user is paying for a service they will expect to be able to use the service for the duration they are being charged for. This is a major challenge for the service provider, given that there are still doubts surrounding the reliability of most WLAN equipment, say analysts.
In September, BT announced plans to bring new hotspots to the UK by the conversion of 100 of its telephone booths to BT Openzone access points (see Broadband Britain Boosted By New Wi-Fi Hotspots).
