Will Service Providers Integrate Public Hotspot Access in a More Active Way?

Up to this point, Wi-Fi has been important for high-speed access providers mostly in an indirect way. Generally speaking, public hotspots have been an amenity offered to paying customers (either fixed or mobile broadband). The business value then is “stickiness,” as the perceived value of a particular offer is higher.

But that might change, with public Wi-Fi possibly becoming a “for fee” service, according to Monica Paolini, owner of Senza Fili Consulting. The extent of end user demand for such changes is unclear. Much would depend on new additional value.

But a number of developments might propel the change. Increased use of VoIP applications over Wi-Fi means low latency and jitter performance is more important, and “best effort” public hotspots might not work well enough to suit all users. A quality-assured approach would help. That might create a new level of value that service providers might be able to charge for.

Business customers might be logical customers, as has generally been the case for other third-party public Wi-Fi networks. Among other advantages, shifting traffic to Wi-Fi hotspots would help enterprise information technology managers avoid expensive data overage charges.

Business Wi-Fi provider iPass, for example, projects it will offer a vastly-bigger network by 2015. 



The advent of fourth generation Long Term Evolution networks might have other unintended consequences. Up to this point, people generally have understood that a public hotspot will offer access speeds greater than 3G.

That might not generally be true for 4G networks. That might limit the amount of traffic offloading, which, in turn, might increase congestion on the LTE networks.

Also, some lighter users, and that is likely a clear majority of smart phone users, don’t necessarily have any incentives to switch to Wi-Fi hotspot access.

Heavier users will have incentives, as use of Wi-Fi preserves data allowances. So some think a quality-assured access, even for a fee, might be feasible and perhaps necessary. By 2015, Cisco projects that as much as 46 percent of all Internet traffic will use a Wi-Fi connection.


The value could be that the service provider mixes and matches acces to provide the best performance. Part of the value might also include applying such mechanisms only when the subscriber is not in danger of exceeding a mobile data allowance. Alternately, such access decisions could be set by the consumer to apply only when the user is on a business trip or requires absolute best performance.

Users might also see value if they are allowed to apply their own policies, such as watching video only on Wi-Fi, but IP voice always over the best available connection.

Price-sensitive subscribers might also want an automatic switch to Wi-Fi access at all times.

The point is that there are growing reasons to integrate and manage public Wi-Fi, private Wi-Fi and mobile network access in a more deliberate way.