The number of carrier-grade WiFi hotspots is expected to grow by 70% over the next five years, overtaking the number of best effort hotspots by a considerable margin.
This is according to research carried out by Maravedis-Rethink on behalf of the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA). Published on Monday, the study found that 57% of telcos have plans to deploy carrier-grade WiFi.
The report predicts that the number of public carrier-grade WiFi hotspots will overtake the number of best effort WiFi hotspots by the end of 2017, and that by 2020, best effort hotspots will account for less than 10% of the total.
"Increased operator confidence in carrier-grade WiFi technology has led to a surge in the growth of deployments over the past 12 months and set a trend that will to continue. Within five years there will be as much as a 70% rise in the number of carrier-grade public WiFi hotspots deployed, vastly outnumbering current best effort," said WBA chief executive Shrikant Shenwai, in a statement.
In addition to providing broadband coverage to consumers, telcos are increasingly looking to WiFi to support their smart cities, Internet of Things (IoT) and machine-to-machine (M2M) strategies, the WBA claims.
"This year’s survey has demonstrated a growing momentum within the ecosystem away from talking about the benefits of carrier-grade to actually realising its potential in high-growth areas such as IoT and smart cities," said Caroline Gabriel, research director at Maravedis-Rethink.
Indeed, according to the WBA’s research, 80% of telcos plan to include carrier-grade WiFi as part of their IoT/M2M architecture.
The survey was carried out during the third quarter of 2015, and had 212 respondents, 80 of whom represented mobile operators. The majority of respondents were based in North America, followed by Europe and Asia-Pacific.
