We probably didn’t need a full-blown report to recognize that better Wi-Fi services can improve customer retention and reduce churn, but that’s one of the main takeaways from a Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) survey.
The annual survey, which was compiled by research company Maravedis-Rethink, reported that 70 percent of the respondents said their main motivation for deploying carrier grade Wi-Fi in their systems was to improve the customer experience and increase subscriber retention. In addition, 41 percent cited this as the single most important driver to invest in next generation hotspot (NGH) projects ahead of offload.
The survey also found that there was an increasing shift in the perception of Wi-Fi services. The largest figure ever seen in the survey (57 percent) said they were more confident about investing in public Wi-Fi (whether as operators or in offering products and carrier services), than they had been a year ago. In the 2013 study, the figure was just under 52 percent, which in turn was up from 43 percent in 2012.
The survey said the increased confidence in Wi-Fi would translate into larger and faster build-outs across a broad range of venues. Large venues, such as stadiums and shopping malls, are the biggest drivers of traffic growth, according to more than 50 percent of the respondents, followed by travel hubs such as airports (cited by 48 percent) and connectivity on board transportation (41 percent.)
“Carrier Wi-Fi has experienced a revolution over the past year and is now being embraced by an ever growing number of carriers. The significant progress in live commercial NGH deployments, and in turn new monetization strategies, provide evidence of major improvements in quality of service, ease of use and revenue generation that the technology brings,” said Shrikant Shenwai, CEO of the WBA. “This research underlines the growing momentum behind Wi-Fi that is increasing year-on-year, driven by the ecosystem coming together to develop the technology and promote its wide ranging benefits.”
The survey also noted the power of Wi-Fi roaming deals, especially internationally. In the 2013 survey, 30 percent of the hotspot operators also had roaming deals to supplement their networks, while in 2014, that percentage has risen to just over half.
Among those surveyed, there was a total base of over 2.8 million directly owned and managed hotspots, and an average of 42,000 in a deployment. But when roaming was included, the carriers could provide a total of 8.85 million locations between them, or an average of 193,000 each.
“What stands out from this year’s survey is a strong focus on the importance of overall customer experience rather than just speed and convenience, and it is cited numerous times as a key driver for the adoption of Wi-Fi. WBA initiatives such as global roaming and Next Generation Hotspot are still being recognized as key enablers of the technology,” said Caroline Gabriel, research director, Maravedis-Rethink.
On the NGH front, last year 44 percent expected to have it deployed by the end of next year. By the end of 2016, a further 31 percent of those with active plans for NGH expected deployments. With NGH becoming a commercial reality, monetization is rising to the top of the agenda and the most dramatic change from last year is that 35 percent of respondents were implementing Wi-Fi roaming as one of their monetization strategies, which is up from just 10 percent last year.
The survey, which was conducted in the third quarter of this year, had a total of 210 respondents with 45 percent of those being operators. Other significant respondent groups were Wi-Fi equipment and device vendors with 25 percent and consultants/integrators, at 19 percent. The majority of the responses were from North America (39 percent) and Europe (26 percent), followed by Asia-Pacific (19 percent.)
Carrier Wi-Fi was a topic of discussion at a pre-conference Wi-Fi symposium ahead of the STCE Cable-Tec Expo in September. Mark Poletti, CableLabs’ lead wireless architect, said at the symposium that carrier Wi-Fi touches the entire Wi-Fi ecosystem, including access point (AP) vendors, AP controllers and servers that can provide data analytics.
The IEEE, Wi-Fi Alliance (WFA) and WBA have been working on carrier Wi-Fi requirements and standards for the past few years with three goals in mind: consistent user experience, network management and fully integrated end-to-end networks. With the building blocks in place in the core network, Poletti said operators could now build large-scale carrier Wi-Fi networks that meet the three goals.
