Public WLANs to muscle in on ISP revenues
The emergence of public wireless LANs (WLANs) in urban environments could provide corporate mobile workers with free Internet access, and pose a serious threat to carrier and Internet service provider (ISP) revenues, says a new report by research firm Analysys.
The company's findings show increased rollouts of 802.11b-based WLANs in public areas such as airport lounges, hotels, train stations, shopping centres and coffee shops could give users in metropolitan areas access to free broadband Internet connections while on the move.
"WLANs will be able to capture some portion of the data-access market because they have the potential to satisfy a need for high-speed mobile data at low cost to users providing a critical level of 802.11 penetration is reached," concluded the report's author, Monica Paolini.
Providing data transfer rates ranging from 1MB per second to 11MB per second, these wireless networks could offer viable alternatives to the third-generation (3G) mobile networks currently being developed by mobile operators. While 3G network equipment is yet to appear on the market, there is already a substantial installed base of 802.11b PC Cards and access points across the globe.
Michael Wall, wireless research analyst at Frost & Sullivan, played down the significance of public WLANs, however. "There is some potential, but I don't think public WLANs are a serious threat to 3G. It is simply too difficult and expensive to give that type of coverage in WLANs," he said.
Users who are connecting to 802.11b-based WLANs need to be within 50 to 100 metres of an access point in order to transmit and receive data, whereas 3G networks should offer coverage on a par with the current GSM cellular infrastructure.
In addition, 802.11 PC Cards can only be used in notebook or handheld PCs, and cannot be integrated with mobile phones because the power consumption is too high.
Another major barrier to the adoption of public WLANs in the UK is the strict licensing controls applied to the increasingly crowded 2.4GHz radio frequency spectrum that 802.11b equipment uses to transmit data. The UK Radio Communications Agency currently bars providers from making a profit or otherwise obtaining a competitive advantage from the provision of public WLANs in this country, although the law is vague and so far untested.
"Changes in regulation are soon expected in the UK, which will preserve unlicensed use of the 2.4GHz band but will allow its economic exploitation," said Paolini.