Today, iPass signed an agreement with China Mobile. Our iPass OMX service will serve as a hub for mobile carriers globally who want to have their subscribers access the China Mobile Wi-Fi network.
One of the reasons we’re really excited about this is because the China Mobile Wi-Fi network is expected to be one of the largest networks on the planet by next year. With China Mobile projecting that they will have over a million locations by 2012.
See how easy it is to use iPass to connect to Wi-Fi, avoiding bandwidth download limits, offloading your roaming charges and giving you faster bandwidth.
With iPassConnect on the iPhone 4, you do have to go to the Settings first to turn on Wi-Fi because iPhone does not allow apps to interact with the Wi-Fi radio. But once that’s done, the iPhone does the work.
See a faster and simpler connection experience with Open Mobile on an Android platform. Start the iPass app, and you can start Wi-Fi within the app and then immediately see all networks available. If there is a network that you’ve previously linked to, you will be auto-connected.
Does a good Wi-Fi experience affect a business travelers’ future choice? You bet it does!
We recently surveyed over 1,100 mobile employees about their business travel and how the availability of Wi-Fi at hotel affects their decisions on where to stay. From the data, we have found some interesting trends.
In our Mobile Usage Data for Q3 2010 of nearly half a million monthly users employed at 3,500 enterprises, we found that hotels continue to be the most popular place to log in when on the road. The length of the average session is now tied at #1 with convention centers for 86 minutes. This means more than a few quick emails are done while staying at a hotel.
79% of mobile employees return to the same locations on business trips. This number goes up for employees 45 years and older, and these same employees travel more for business.
A poor hotel Wi-Fi experience impacts 36 percent of business travelers on whether they book that specific hotel in the future
95 percent of business travelers care if there is Wi-Fi or a wired connection in a hotel
Overall, 51 percent of mobile employees prefer to book at hotels with Wi-Fi and 14 percent find Ethernet acceptable, while another 24.4 percent assume it is available.
More than half of mobile employees tell the front desk if there is a problem with their Wi-Fi. 37 percent will choose or avoid that hotel in the future, and another 17 percent will avoid or seek out the entire hotel chain based on a negative or positive experience.
Digging deeper, we looked just at mobile workers that said that they took the time to check if Wi-Fi or Ethernet is available at their hotel. These travelers were 20% more likely to book at or avoid this hotel or chain based on their experience, and 26% more likely to complain at a travel guide website.
This is completely in-line with our earlier post about JD Power and Associates’ 2010 North America Hotel Guest Satisfaction Index Study that showed that hotel guests indicate that wireless Internet access is their #1 Most Important Amenity in all but one hotel segment.
So, in closing, we found that mobile employees and business travelers do care whether there is Wi-Fi and their satisfaction will impact whether they come back and whether they tell a friend.
On Tuesday, I talked started to talk about “The 4G Faux Choice,” and wanted to continue on what you should do.
IMHO, given that there won’t be immediate national coverage on either LTE nor WiMAX, the choice should be made on the basis of which carrier has the geographic coverage that best fits your enterprise mobility needs for the period you are committing to. I recommend the following approach for companies with US-based mobile employees:
Pick the carrier who’s coverage matches up best today and in the coming year with where your mobile employees will need the service
Feel free to mix and match carriers and also consider WiFi as an option until 4G becomes ubiquitous in the US
Go ahead and commit to a 2-year deal, knowing that you will likely have true competition between carriers in 2013 and that you will, in all likelihood, benefit from the fact that you will continue to have some leverage.
I would consider carefully 3-year commits with a carrier, as 2013 could be an inflexion point as it relates to service pricing, performance, availability and device support
The Clearwire network architecture will support a move to LTE. I expect that Clear will make that decision in the next 1-2 years if a dearth of WiMAX devices ensues, or if the devices become too expensive, or if they fall behind LTE devices in terms features/performance.
If Sprint/Clear have the best footprint, so don’t be afraid to consider them. The biggest difference between the two networks is how much Verizon Wireless is spending on marketing the quality of their network, rather than the actual reach or quality of their networks. Both carriers will more than meet the enterprises mobile network performance expectations.
There is no wrong choice between LTE and WiMAX; enterprises can win under either scenario. There are plenty of questions that you’ll need to answer while developing a well-thought-out enterprise mobility approach. However, which standard wins out in a 4G world shouldn’t be one of them. Let the carriers figure that out.
The real question is: Who can serve my needs today and over the course of the next 2-3 years from a geographic coverage perspective?
As an IT Manager, you are tasked with divining industry trends and making choices that enable your enterprise to remain competitive and, perhaps, making choices that create an opportunity for competitive advantage. Enterprise mobility decisions have either risen to the top of your list or are in the process doing so very rapidly.
One of the questions we hear frequently from customers is regarding the much-written-about battle for the hearts and minds of the mobile carriers between the competing 4G standards: WiMAX and LTE. I was on call with an IT manager for one of our large customers and he asked me about the 4G standards and my opinion on what the implications were for enterprises. He promptly concluded what is obvious from everything you read – LTE has won. What became obvious to me in the course of the several minute discussion that ensued is that while there has been much written about these standards, their benefits and who is adopting them, there has been very little written from an enterprise perspective.
So here is a humble attempt to take a public discussion that is being pursued mostly for the benefit of carriers and equipment manufacturers and try to bring it home for IT managers who are struggling with the question: “OK, great, what should we do about it?”
Ultimately, as an IT manager you’re the best person to answer that question for your company. What I hope to be able to do is help to cut through some of the information clutter and perhaps bust a few “well-known truths” down to size along the way. . .
LTE will win out in the long run. Therefore I should cast my lot with a carrier that supports LTE, correct?
If you were a technology architect at a mobile carrier, the answer to: “Which 4G technology standard will win out in the long run?” is probably the first thing you need to know, in order to plan future purchases and allocate resources to future projects. But you are not, and the long run is at least 2-3 budget cycles from today. What is more important to the enterprise than what the prevailing technology will be 2-3 years from now is: what you can get that meets your needs this year and next. It is less important to work with a carrier that has made an early commitment to LTE, as practically all carriers will begin the process of deploying LTE-based services in the next 2-3 years.
LTE will be available by the end of the year, so I should wait to make a decision until then.
True, LTE will be available according to Verizon Wireless by the end of this year. However, I don’t see this as a reason to delay making a decision. Waiting for the end of this year for LTE is great if the mobility needs of your enterprise are limited to the few cities where LTE services will be available. If that is not the case, please read on. . .
If you read in between the lines of the recent Verizon Wireless announcement, their 4G coverage won’t reach 100% of the National Football League (NFL) cities until end of 2011 and won’t match the current 3G coverage until the end of 2013! The reality of the network deployment game is that Sprint, Comcast and Time Warner Cable, through their partnership with Clearwire, will likely reach coverage at 100% of the NFL cities by early Q1 2011, putting them 9-12 months ahead of the Verizon rollout.
There will be a bigger selection of devices for LTE, doesn’t that mean I need to focus on that technology?
The reality is that today, there are more devices available for WiMAX than LTE. That is likely to change over the next 2-3 years. For next 2 years, I wouldn’t consider it a limiting factor. Frankly with Intel behind WiMAX, there is reason to believe that within the next 2-4 years WiMAX-enabled PCs could become just as ubiquitous as WiFi-enabled ones are today. I wouldn’t necessarily plan on it, but it is a possibility.
The reality is the existence of two carriers (for now) making such large capital investments to upgrade their mobile data networks is good for enterprise because it gives you a choice, today.
Making a choice between LTE or WiMax – stay tuned for Part 2…
As an IT Manager, you are tasked with divining industry trends and making choices that enable your enterprise to remain competitive and, perhaps, making choices that create an opportunity for competitive advantage. Enterprise mobility decisions have either risen to the top of your list or are in the process doing so very rapidly.
