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PCCA Journal|4

th

Quarter 2014

21

President and CEO Evan Kaplan said.

“Most of the devices we use are Wi-Fi

only and even on the most advanced 4G

handsets, 78 percent of data goes over

Wi-Fi. Simply put, it’s the network of

choice for consumers and soon they’ll be

able to roam this alternative network of

millions of hotspots.”


Wi-Fi is also on the move; becom-

ing available on 60 percent of planes

and 11 percent of trains by 2018. This

compares to only 16 percent of planes

and 3 percent of trains equipped with

Wi-Fi in 2014. Community “homespot”

public Wi-Fi hotspots will see the most

explosive growth, rising from just under

40 million in 2014 to more than 325 mil-

lion in 2018.

“The growth in community hotspots

is taking public Wi-Fi from the cities

to the suburbs,” said Peter White, co-

founder, Maravedis Rethink. “The fixed

line operators with superfast broadband

in the ground are converting residential

customers to community hotspot provid-

ers at the rate of 1 per second. For many

years, all the talk around mobility has

been on 3G/4G and a handful of mobile

operators. Our data shows that in the

coming years it’s Wi-Fi that will steal the

limelight as consumers’ thirst for data

goes beyond anything that cellular can

deliver, and as business owners see the

value Wi-Fi brings to helping them dif-

ferentiate and innovate.”

The research showed that Wi-Fi is

changing the power structures of the

telecommunications industry. Fifty

percent of all commercial hotspots are

controlled by brands whose core busi-

ness isn’t telecommunications. Just a

few years ago there were only a handful

of Wi-Fi suppliers; now there are mil-

lions. As opposed to the highly regulated

cellular world, Wi-Fi is organic, emer-

gent, and empowering; it’s not regulated

and it’s easy for anyone to deploy. As a

result, we are witnessing a power shift

from traditional telcos to business own-

ers, such as cafes, hoteliers, and retailers

who are all getting in on the Wi-Fi game.

“A messy and fragmented global Wi-Fi

network is emerging; the challenge is

that it needs to be easy for consumers to

access and simple for providers to mone-

tize. This is where we’ll see the platform

players like Facebook and Google come

to the party. They have the ability to

help this new breed of Wi-Fi provider get

paid in meaningful currencies—namely

cash, advertising, or user data,” Kaplan

said. “Just look back ten years or so,

many business were under-utilizing their

online assets before the emergence of

Google AdSense; now many are making

significant revenues from it.”

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