Hotspots fail to spark business imagination
Hotspots fail to spark business imagination
A recent survey by the IDC has revealed that whilst the WLAN market continues to flourish in Australia, not many people are interested in using hotspots.
The IDC has found that one fifth of Australian businesses already have WLAN within their organisations and that is now catching on too in public areas.
In contrast, the hotspot market has not received such a high response in use and revenue. Warren Chaisatien, IDC Australia's senior analyst for mobile & wireless solutions explained why he thinks this is the case.
"Enterprises have been keen to incorporate the WLAN service because it fits nicely with the current trend in Australian businesses to migrate all of their I.T. infrastructure so that it can be accessed centrally. It is a nice entry point for companies looking to improve the mobility of its workers. For instance, it fits in well with the deployment of voice over I.P.s, and the bringing of voice and data together. It is easy to test and has a lot of security guaranteed too.
"Coverage, pricing, roaming and billing issues, as well as security concerns have been identified as inhibitors to the adoption of the public WLAN service. The location of WiFi services area also problematic. You usually find them in cafes or places like Mcdonalds, so it is not very convenient for mobile workers, because the areas for access are restricted. Also, if you went to one of these access points, you'd be expected to pay extra money for a supplementary product, in addition to the high cost of using the service, which ranges between six and ten dollars."
Chaisatien also said that he thought Telstra and Optus had rolled out this WiFi services as a defensive strategy, because they wanted to get in there before anybody else could.
Looking to the future, IDC believes cellular carriers can best take adavantage of WLAN and hotspot market opportunities by assisting companies with corporate WLAN initiatives and offering hotspot as a complementary service, while DSL an cable modem service providers can bundle hotspot with their consumer high-speed internet access offerings.
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