New study predicts that hotspots will quadruple in the next four years

Nov 9, 2011 16:02 GMT  ·  By

The Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) hasn't been slacking off and, instead, conducted some research into what will happen to the worldwide WiFi coverage over the course of what remains of this first half of the second decade of the third millennium.

WiFi is getting support on pretty much every PC nowadays, especially laptops, so the pressure on the existing wireless infrastructure is ever on the rise.

Of course, this goes for 3G and wired networks as well, but that is not what the latest study conducted by the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) was concerned with.

Data-wise, mobile traffic will reach 16.84 million terabytes by 2014.

What WBA looked into this time was the probable evolution of the worldwide WiFi hotspot coverage.

The conclusion was that the 1.3 million of 2011 will grow to 5.8 million hotspots by 2011, and this is not even counting community hotspots created by users that share their own WiFi access points.

All in all, there will be about four times more WiFi hotspots worldwide by the end of the first half of this decade

“The findings show we are about to enter the golden age of public Wi-Fi with hotspot deployments set to soar. Fixed operators are extending broadband services beyond the home and office, and Wi-Fi is supporting busy mobile broadband networks,” said Chris Bruce (PDF), Chair of the WBA and CEO, BT Openzone.

“Next Generation Hotspot trials are making inroads in the remaining barriers and by cracking the code of a simple, secure user experience hotspot use will continue to soar.”

WBA complied its report based on data compiled by analyst firm Informa and sees the growing number of smartphone connections as the primary driving force, even if laptops are in the lead now. In fact, it will not take overly long for the former to outrun the latter.

Right now, smartphones account for 36% of the total, while laptops have 48% and tablets, young as they are, 10%.