Europe will have 37 million Wi-Fi hotspot users in five
years' time, but few of them will be frequent users with
subscription accounts, a wireless research company report
claims.
ON World's report concluded that providers will miss out on a
massive market if they do not reduce prices. At present, just 15%
of customers would use hotspots at least once a week.
The report also found that European hotspot service prices were
more than double the average price in the US and four times the
average in the Asia Pacific region where Wi-Fi thrives.
As hotspots spread to central and eastern European countries -
where mobile phone and broadband penetration are high - pricing
models are still favouring international business travellers
logging on in airports and hotels. The 15% who would be frequent
users would be business customers. Recreational use would be
hardest hit by pricing.
However, IDC was not so gloomy about the take-up of hotspot
services. Evelyn Wigger, its Wi-Fi analyst in the
Netherlands,said five years is a long time in such an emerging
technology market and she expected that by 2009 most mobile phone
companies would be offering Wi-Fi as an almost invisible integrated
service all over Europe.
That could make it hard to determine how many people were
frequent hotspot users but she still anticipated that most
customers would use Wi-Fi more than a few times a month.
"Probably next year, or the year after prices will come down.
Wi-Fi will be integrated into another mobile offering - for example
as a GPRS add-on. The customer doesn't need to know which
technology they are using," Wigger said.
"Mobile companies are already working on it. Most in Europe have
some sort of Wi-Fi offering."
ON World agreed that Wi-Fi would "ultimately be offered as part
of a network operator's extended network and would enable mobile
operators to finally profit from their 3G investments, especially
by offering dual-mode [cellular/Wi-Fi] mobile phones".
But in the meantime, providers are losing out on a major
opportunity. ON World said that Korea Telecom - at a cheap rate -
made $65m in Wi-Fi hotspot revenue last year.
In terms of numbers, ON World predicted that Europe would have
174,000 hotspots by 2009, up from 8,500 at the end of last year.
The world total would be 720,000, up from 41,000.
Madeleine Acey writes for Techworld