On Monday, The Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA), shared with MMW the published findings of a new report on the Wi-Fi hotspot market compiled by global research company Maravedis-Rethink.
According to the results of the survey, Tier 1 Mobile Operators expect 22% of all additional data capacity added during 2013-2014 to come from Wi-Fi offload.
By 2018, Wi-Fi offload is predicted to contribute 20% of additional mobile data capacity plus a further 21% will come from small cells with integrated Wi-Fi.
This shows how important data offload is to mobile operators, accounting for an average of 20% of data traffic, up to 80% in densely populated areas such as transport hubs and cafes. Within homes and businesses offload levels are 50% to 60%.
The survey also highlighted that 51% of respondents, 56% of those being operators, are more confident about investing in Wi-Fi to supplement cellular than they had been a year earlier.
“Renewed confidence can be attributed to increased hotspot deployments and more ambitious business plans announced by some carriers, as well as the vast improvements made to Wi-Fi through enhanced roaming agreements and WBA initiatives such as Next Generation Hotspot (NGH),” the report reads.
Shrikant Shenwai, CEO of the WBA, says public Wi-Fi “is steadily maturing and is now being embraced by an ever growing number of operators. NGH brings significant improvements in terms of quality of service and ease of use, bringing a cellular experience to Wi-Fi.”
