Wi-Fi is back and this time the carriers mean business

Tuesday, May 24th, 2011 Karen Ambrose Hickey, Editor

If there was ever a doubt that the telecom industry is back, then this week put that to rest. The annual International Telecoms Week event in Washington DC was packed with over 5000 attendees doing the traditional wholesale deals and also stepping up to the industry structural changes that seem to be constant in telecom.

Wi-Fi, an area not traditionally given much attention by the telecom giants, was front and center at the Deutsche Telekom event at ITW. The new head of Deutsche Telekom ICSS, Holger Magnussen, announcedthe WiFi Mobilize service, in partnership with iPass. The service was announced on May 9th but today was the official rollout to the wholesale carrier community.

Driven by the rapid adoption of Wi-Fi-enabled devices and bandwidth hungry apps, carriers now view Wi-Fi as an essential piece of the future mobile broadband picture. Deutsche Telekom has long held a position in Wi-Fi but are now stepping forward to enable the global carrier wholesale community to take retail Wi-Fi services to market that at the core, enable carriers and network operators to integrate Wi-Fi into their mobile smartphone and tablet offerings in a seamless, reliable way.

Wi-Fi is back and this time the carriers mean business.

Tags: carriers, mobile employee, smartphone, wi-fi access