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Public Access Wireless LANs Threaten Mobile Revenues, Says BWCS Report
URL(s): BWCS
27th July 2001, Ledbury, UK: Tremendous growth in the number of wireless LAN hotspots will cause real damage to the corporate revenues of mobile operators warns BWCS. According to Wireless LANs and the Threat to Mobile Revenues, the latest report from international telecoms consultancy BWCS, by 2006 there will be almost 17 million W-LAN hotspot users worldwide generating annual revenues of some US$7.3 billion. This could blow a huge hole in some already leaky 3G business plans.
BWCS Consultant and report co-author Peter Bell warns: “3G mobile operators are going to see the cream of the mobile data market subscribe to high speed wireless LAN services before they can even get their own marketing machines into gear. W-LAN technology is available now and can already offer much higher data rates to laptop and PDA users than will ever be provided by 3G services.”
By 2006, BWCS forecasts there will be 114,220 wireless LAN hotspots worldwide, up from around 6,300 at the end of 2001. “There is a huge potential market for these hotspots to capture,” argues Bell. “There are around 20 million wirelessly-enabled laptops and PDAs being shipped every year and we believe that by 2006, 95% of them will be equipped to hook up to these networks.”
Bell added: “Using unlicensed frequencies in the 2.4GHz band, wireless ISPs are targeting mobile data customers with time on their hands in locations such as airport lounges, hotel lobbies, conference centres and cafés. While W-LAN networks cannot hope to match the coverage of cellular networks, they can already offer download speeds of up to 11Mbps, compared to the 2Mbps services being promised by nascent 3G operators in two to three years time.”
About Wireless LANs and the Threat to Mobile Revenues In the current climate, the last thing the mobile industry needed was a new set of unregulated competitors offering wireless data connections at much higher speeds than the mobile operators could ever hope to achieve. Yet that is exactly what has happened. A new breed of unlicensed wireless LAN (W-LAN) operators is springing up. Using equipment based on the globally accepted 802.11b W-LAN (WiFi) standard, a group of largely US and Scandinavian upstarts are racing to roll out short-range, high-speed data access points for business travellers in North America, Europe
and the Asia-Pacific region.
BWCS’ latest report, Wireless LANs and the Threat to Mobile Revenues, uncovers the potential for future growth in the W-LAN sector and examines what effects this could have on 3G mobile markets.
About BWCS BWCS Ltd is a telecoms consultancy that advises on the sales and marketing of telecoms and e-commerce related services, software and equipment. BWCS has worked with leading players in the telecoms sector, providing them with a services including strategy formulation, competitor profiling, bid management and due diligence.
BWCS also produces a range of expert-authored reports and handbooks for the telecoms industry. These cover specialist areas such as telecoms law as well as technologies such as wireless application protocol and strategic issues such as revenue opportunities for the wireless internet. Further information on BWCS can be found on our website - BWCS
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