iPass Expands Network to 1 Million Premium Global Wi-Fi Hotspots

Global connectivity provider iPass has today announced that its worldwide network of “premium” quality wireless internet hotspots (wifi) has reached the 1 million milestone, which is a massive rise from the 40,000 or so they had at the end of 2007.

The figure has been achieved because of the firms iPass Global Broadband Roaming (GBR) network, which effectively amalgamates services from multiple third party wifi operators and delivers access to them through a single login.

For example, several of iPass’s biggest UK partners include The Cloud (BSkyB) and BTWifi (formely BTOpenzone).

Evan Kaplan, President and CEO of iPass, said:

“IT solution providers are increasingly valuable for enterprise as corporate IT departments move from a world of IT control to IT sponsorship. We live in a real-time connected world where devices are cheap but networks are increasingly expensive. It’s not only the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) conundrum that needs to be resolved; enterprises need to bring their own Wi-Fi network.”

The iPass platform is typically catered more for the business traveller market and as a result it’s standard pricing model is a more pay-as-you-go (payg) focused approach, which charges upwards of 6.4p a minute (10 cents USD) for access (depending upon where you are in the world). On the other hand this is a lot cheaper than some mobile operators charge, particularly when outside of Europe.