Major Changes in Fast Growing W-LAN Market
(11/09/2002, Ledbury, UK)
The market for public access W-LAN services is entering a new and critical stage argues BWCS latest report Wireless LANs At the Edge: Unlocking Corporate Mobile Data Revenues. The 300-page report describes a market being driven forward by a new raft of powerful players moving swiftly to dominate the sector.
The W-LAN market is one of the few growth stories left in town, argues consultant and co-author Peter Kingsland, and the worlds major equipment vendors and telecoms companies are determined to be a part of it.
Total number of W-LAN Hotspots 2002 - 2007
BWCS projects that by 2007 the total number of public access hotspots around the world will be over 128,000. By that date the sector will account for 11.7% of the wireless data market. The key to this growth will be corporate users. BWCS argues that the growing number of enterprises installing W-LAN systems, combined with growing shipments of Wi-Fi ready laptops and PDAs, plus changing work patterns, will continue to expand the potential user pool for this type of service.
Kingsland says: The mobile and IT industries are both striving to untether the internet. Wireless LANs are where these two strategies converge, which is what makes it such a compelling technology. The focus has now shifted from the mobile internet to making the internet mobile.
However, the the report points out that the days of capital-intensive independent wireless ISPs are numbered. We have effectively seen the end of the standalone hotspot owner-operator business model, with a string of well-known W-ISPs selling out or switching the focus of their operations, argues Kingsland. But this does not mean the end of the road for W-LAN hotspot market: far from it. With IBM, Microsoft, Cisco, HP and Toshiba along with a growing band of mobile and fixed line telecoms companies moving quickly to drive this market forward, the hotspot sector is entering its next stage of evolution.
About Wireless LANs At the Edge: Unlocking Corporate Mobile Data Revenues.
Building on the foundations laid in the ground-breaking BWCS report Wireles LANs and the Threat to Mobile Revenues, this new report analyses in detail the emerging W-LAN hotspot players and business models. The report also studies how the needs of corporate users are being met in the hotspot.
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