Public Wi-Fi networks limp into life

The public wireless local area network (Lan) market is finally taking off, with the combined spend on services in the US and Western Europe forecast to reach around €4.7bn by 2009, newly published market research has found.

A report from Analysys suggested that the technology's ongoing prospects are rosy. Senior analyst Ariel Dajes, author of the study, believes that there is still "substantial growth potential" in the area.

"The market will be relatively small in absolute terms compared with mobile cellular services, but we think that it still presents a significant opportunity for players interested in making money from business and residential customers when they are out of the home or the office," he said.

Although the business traveller still continues to drive this immature market, the analyst firm said that it is imperative that public wireless Lan providers expand to new customer segments.

"We expect that, by 2009, there will be at least as many residential as business customers," added Dajes.

The report argues that expansion into the consumer market must be enabled by the development of devices and key applications, such as voice, and the ubiquity of network availability. It also points to the need for more simple billing.

"We expect to see broadband operators following the approach taken by Korea Telecom in South Korea, Deutsche Telekom in Germany and TeliaSonera in Finland, bundling public wireless Lans with broadband or cellular data services to offer much more competitively priced services," said Dajes.