More Free Wi-Fi on the Way
Both Verizon and AT&T have made news this week by offering more free Wi-Fi services.
Tue, July 28, 2009
Network World — Both Verizon and AT&T have made news this week by offering more free Wi-Fi services.
Verizon Offers Free Wi-Fi to Consumer Customers
In Verizon's case, the company said for the first time that it would offer complimentary access to all of its Wi-Fi hotspots nationwide for its FiOS subscribers or High-Speed Internet customers. As Computerworld reported earlier this week, Verizon's expanded Wi-Fi offerings will utilize Boingo Wireless access points throughout the country.
Although Boingo offers access points in more than 30,000 locations nationwide, a Verizon spokesman told Computerworld that not all of those access points would be available to Verizon customers. When asked specifically how many access points could be used by Verizon customers, the spokesman would only say "thousands."
In a recent interview with CNET, Verizon spokesman Eric Rabe downplayed the importance of Wi-Fi in his company's overall mobility strategy and instead touted Verizon's current 3G EV-DO and future 4G LTE networks as offering the best value for wireless customers."Our cellular 3G network allows people to be truly mobile," he told CNET. "And you can't do that with hotspots."
In contrast to Verizon's relatively blasé attitude toward Wi-Fi hotspots, AT&T has been aggressively promoting itself as the king of the Wi-Fi market. In data released this week, AT&T said its Wi-Fi hotspots had handled nearly 15 million separate connections in the second quarter of 2009 and said that its hotspots had been accessed roughly 25.6 million times so far in 2009. In contrast, AT&T says it only recorded 20 million connections to its hotspots for all of 2008.
AT&T has long offered free Wi-Fi access to its broadband subscribers, but this week the company started to branch out to non-subscribers as well when it began offering free Wi-Fi connectivity to all Barnes & Noble customers. Anyone can now walk into a Barnes & Noble store with a Wi-Fi capable device and hook onto the network without paying a connection fee. Previously, only AT&T customers had been able to access free Wi-Fi services at the bookstore chain.
Barnes & Noble CEO Steve Riggio described the decision to offer free Wi-Fi in his company's stores as a natural step in the evolution of traditional retail stores. Barnes & Noble wants its customers to download its own applications that promise access to more than 700,000 eBooks on its online bookstore.
"This is a natural progression of our digital strategy to provide customers with more choices in how, when and where they want to read," he explained.
AT&T has been continuously investing in more Wi-Fi capabilities, as the company expanded its total number of Wi-Fi hotspots to 20,000 last year when it purchased network and applications management company Wayport for $275 million. AT&T also significantly expanded its Wi-Fi footprint last year when it began deploying its Wi-Fi services to 7,000 Starbucks locations nationwide.
