Posted: 09th Nov, 2011 By: MarkJ

The
Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) has today published new research into the global public Wi-Fi Hotspot market, which was created by analyst firm
Informa. The study revealed that public wireless internet hotspots, excluding '
community hotspots' where users share their own Wi-Fi, are expected to grow from 1.3 million in 2011 to
5.8 million by 2015 (a 350% increase).
Most of the growth will be concentrated in three types of location: wide-area outdoor hotzones (e.g. parks); local-area outdoor hotzones (e.g. popular tourist attractions); and transport hubs (e.g. airports). As a result
global mobile data traffic is expected to reach
16.84 Million Terabytes by 2014.
Chris Bruce, Chair of the WBA and CEO of BTOpenzone, said:
"The findings show we are about to enter the golden age of public Wi-Fi with hotspot deployments set to soar. Fixed operators are extending broadband services beyond the home and office, and Wi-Fi is supporting busy mobile broadband networks. Next Generation Hotspot trials are making inroads in the remaining barriers and by cracking the code of a simple, secure user experience hotspot use will continue to soar."
Furthermore 58% of Hotspot operators, including 47% of mobile operators, believe that Wi-Fi hotspots are now either "
very important" or "
crucial" to their customers’ experience (e.g. by offloading data from busy Mobile Broadband networks and acting as a value-added extra). Speaking of which, Smartphone based connections to Wi-Fi hotspots will soon overtake Laptops globally.
Sadly several key barriers continue to hamper adoption and use of public Wi-Fi hotspots, including
cumbersome authentication procedures, costs of access, user discovery of available networks and fears about weak security.
Some of these issues will be resolved by
Next Generation Hotspots (NGH), which make it seamless for users to roam between mobile (3G, 4G) and Wi-Fi networks using their mobile
phone's SIM card as authentication. Costs will also come down, especially in the UK where major operators like Virgin Media , BT , O2 , Sky Broadband and more have been busy building up their Wi-Fi networks.