Deutsche Telekom in Deal with Fon for Public Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi offload is one area where most communications service providers believe they can, and should, work with third parties and customers to potentially offload some amount of demand from the mobile network to the fixed network.

In the latest such deal, Fon, the global Wi-Fi network, will be working with Deutsche Telekom, the leading German telco, to build Germany's largest Wi-Fi network, which will launch in the summer of 2013.

“WLAN to go” will create what is said to be the largest public Wi-Fi network in Germany. Separately, U.S. cable operators are working to build a seamless national network of cable-affiliated hotspots, while Verizon and AT&T both offer nationwide hotspot services as well.

KPN also has partnered with Fon in the  Netherlands. As part of that deal, KPN customers will share a portion of their own home bandwidth in exchange for free access on shared broadband connections of other KPN broadband customers in the Netherlands and Fon customers in other countries.

Belgacom, Belgium’s largest telecommunications company, has a similar deal with Fon. In addition to Wi-Fi access in Belgium, Belgacom Internet customers will get global access to the hotspots of Fon’s global WiFi network.

Oi, a Brazilian service provider, is working with Fon on a project in Rio de Janeiro.

All those initiatives makes sense for mobile service providers who effectively provide higher quality of service (Wi-Fi often provides faster access, for example) and can more gradually add capacity to their networks.

There are some potentially important ramifications beyond that, however. It is not unusual for service providers to use wholesale facilities supplied by third-party partners. It might be a bit more unusual for a service provider to rely on facilities amalgamated by a community of users who are sharing their own paid-for connections to create a separate third-party network, which in turn is big enough to be relied upon by major mobile service providers.

Also, carriers traditionally prefer to rely on facilities based on use of licensed spectrum, rather than unlicensed spectrum, and fixed network transport instead of wireless transport, at least in some markets and regions.

All of the moves by fixed and mobile service providers to create large public hotspot networks also show the more flexible attitude now being taken by service providers to provide access to their networks using even non-traditional wholesale arrangements.


Edited by Brooke Neuman