Cutting the price of Wi-Fi will not encourage more
people to use it, claimed BT Group head of Wi-Fi Chris
Clark.
"The elasticity of price in Wi-Fi is still not proven," he said
at the Wireless Lan Event in London's Olympia yesterday. "Reducing
the price does not increase usage."
Earlier, Clark had been praising the success of BT Openzone's
Wireless Broadband Week which, apparently, more than doubled the
traffic on BT's Wi-Fi network by cutting prices.
Clark, formerly the president of BT Global Services, has moved
into his present role because it is time to move Wi-Fi onto a
commercial footing. "We are at an inflection point," he said.
"Wi-Fi was a technology play, now it is a business play."
His predecessor, Dave Hughes, has become chief technical officer
for BT Retail in a general shake-up of BT's upper echelons. "Dave
will focus on new technologies such as WiMax," said Clark.
Clark's full argument is that Wi-Fi is a business service, not a
consumer service, and the main barrier to business use are concerns
about security, not cost.
"It is now about building user awareness," he said. "Large
companies take longer to make decisions." They also need more
detail on the "value proposition" than they are getting so far.
"The US marketplace is exceptional," said Clark, although he
doubted that US operators were getting a lot more business by
running at lower prices.
However, Californian wireless research company ON World
concluded that Europe was missing out on a massive Wi-Fi
boom because prices were too high. European hotspot service prices
were more than double the average price in the US and four times
the average in the Asia-Pacific region.
Clark claimed BT's Wireless Broadband Week promotion - which
targeted business users as well as consumers - drove more users
onto Wi-Fi hotspots by offering free connection. "Traffic went up
by 133% in one week," he said, adding that it was not just because
it was free. "It has continued to rise."
As head of wireless broadband Clark intends to make it easier
for corporations to get hold of Wi-Fi centrally, for instance by
finding ways to package it with other access technologies,
including GPRS and 3G.
Roaming between technologies might be nice in future, he
implied, but for now the big thing was merging the bills. "3G and
Wi-Fi are complementary, not competing," he said.
BT has no targets for Wi-Fi business, he said, although a
previous promise to make £300m revenue by 2005 is still in
place.
While IT users are uncertain about Wi-Fi, Clark expected steady
growth rather than an explosion. "Usage is light, but that is not
an issue. This is a maturing market."
Peter Judge writes for Techworld
Europe's missing out on Wi-Fi revolution >>