Global roaming experts at iPass have released the latest statistics from their twice-yearly 'Mobile Broadband Index' survey, which revealed that London is still Wi-Fi Hotspot capital of the world with 1.3% of the global total and an annual growth of 156%.

The iPass Mobile Broadband Index (formerly the iPass Wi-Fi Hotspot Index) summarizes 3G 'Mobile Broadband' and Wi-Fi Hotspot usage data collected by iPass across its base of approximately 1,000,000 quarterly users and 90,000 Hotspots:


However, the USA remains top of Wi-Fi equipped countries, commanding 51% of the global total, trailed by the UK on just 13%. The average time spent online via a Wi-Fi Hotspot in the USA was 88 minutes compared with 86 in the UK:


Naturally North America also retains the top spot for 'Regions of the World' with a global total of 51% and a growth rate of 61%. Meanwhile Europe is busy catching up, with 40% of the total and a staggering growth rate of 142%!

The Asia Pacific region follows in a distant third with 7% of the global total and a respectable 77% growth rate. Further behind still is Latin America on 1% of the total and a 133% growth rate.

Cafés were the dominant location people used when accessing Wi-Fi Hotspots, accounting for 11% of usage, followed by Restaurants on 4%. However the annual growth rate for Cafés was just 33%, while Restaurants grew a stunning 217%.

Finally, the statistics for 3G Mobile Broadband data usage revealed that the average monthly data transferred per user during 2007 was 164.4MB (MegaBytes), an increase of 25% over the 12 month period. Usage grew from 151.7MB during Q1-2007 to 189.6MB at the end of Q4-2007.

Typically such figures do not represent the entire market and have not been broken down into country specific figures, which is a shame because we suspect that the UK's 3G data usage growth rate would have been much higher. Recent price cuts and service improvements appear to have had a huge impact on uptake.