In 2002 and first-quarter 2003 the global public WLAN market grew at an extraordinary pace, with over 40 major operators from a wide variety of backgrounds launching hotspot services in over 20 countries, according to a new report from Baskerville. The operator boom will help drive the number of WLAN hotspots worldwide from 14,242 in 2002 to over 135,000 by 2007, but only a select group of operators will manage to translate hotspots into substantial revenues and profits.
"Mobile and fixed-line operators moved into the PWLAN market in force in late 2002 and early 2003, but operator strategies and services vary dramatically," says Mike Roberts, analyst at Baskerville's Planet Wireless and principal author of the report. "Flawed strategies and services that some operators have abandoned--but others are still pursuing--include excessively high prices, a lack of incentives for users to transition from prepaid use to subscriptions, and poor agreements with hotspot site owners."
Fixed-line operator KT in South Korea is the world ' s top PWLAN operator measured by number of hotspots, followed by mobile operator T-Mobile USA. "This highlights that both fixed and mobile operators are in a strong position to launch PWLAN services because both have established brands and billing relationships with millions of existing customers," Roberts says. "Both can also use existing costly resources--including service provisioning and customer support systems--to launch new PWLAN services."
PWLAN hotspot revenues will increase dramatically from 2003 to 2007, driven by large-scale hotspot deployments and the proliferation of Wi-Fi devices. Intel's Centrino and similar developments will lead most new notebook computers to ship with Wi-Fi by 2004-05, and technical advances mean that Wi-Fi will also be integrated in millions of PDAs and mobile phones by 2005, according to report forecasts.
As Roberts notes, "Mobile Wi-Fi devices and new vendor platforms will also make Wi-Fi voice services far more widespread by 2005, which means that now is the time for mobile operators to assess how VoIP over WLAN will impact cellular revenues."
Posted to the site on 24th April 2003
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