AT&T now has 460 mobile data offload points in NYC

If there’s a city AT&T has been most aggressive in using Wi-Fi to augment its mobile broadband network, it’s New York. On Thursday, AT&T kicked off an initiative with NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg to put free Wi-Fi in 20 city parks across all five boroughs. While anyone can access the Wi-Fi network free of charge, so can AT&T smartphone and mobile broadband customers, adding more than two dozen new mobile data offload points in the city that has taxed AT&T’s high-speed packet access (HSPA) networks the most.

AT&T now has 460 hotspots in the NYC metro area that AT&T mobility can seamlessly access, potentially relieving the wider area cellular network of an enormous data load. That’s roughly 2% of AT&T’s total hotspots in the U.S. Most of those hotspots are in Starbucks coffee shops, other cafes and restaurants and hotels, but AT&T has been deploying outdoor Wi-Fi in key locations, using high-capacity long-range wireless technologies that greatly expand the reach and load of a typical access point. In addition to the public parts, Times Square is now blanketed with Wi-Fi (though it is only available to AT&T customers). AT&T has extended that hotzone program to other parts of the country, for instance covering San Francisco’s Embarcadero Center and Austin’s Sixth Street (CP: As mobile data spikes can Wi-Fi come to 3G’s rescue?)

Other operators are pursuing mobile offload strategies, too. Verizon Wireless has said it would use Wi-Fi selectively to cover places which intermittently host huge density of mobile data users—stadiums, for instance (CP: Verizon to offload 3G/4G data through Wi-Fi hotspots). Meanwhile, T-Mobile hasn’t deployed any Wi-Fi or its own but is making extensive use of publically available Wi-Fi to offload both voice and data traffic (Unfiltered: T-Mobile quietly builds up its mobile data offload operation). But AT&T has been by far the most aggressive operator to utilize the technology, particularly after the network congestion it experienced due to the iPhone.

New York was especially hard hit by the traffic deluge, leading AT&T to invest heavily in adding new cells and new carriers in that market. AT&T has also upgraded its backhaul network throughout the NYC metro area to fiber and Ethernet, allowing it to support greater HSPA+ speeds and build more overall capacity into the network. Those 460 access points have certainly helped alleviate some of that congestion, thought AT&T won’t say how much.
“We aren’t providing capacity or traffic info, for proprietary reasons,” an AT&T spokesman said in an e-mail interview. “We are continually working to improve our customers’ experience not just in New York City, but all across the country. As demand has increased throughout the five boroughs we have responded by expanding and enhancing the network.”

A survey conducted by DeviceScape of wireless data users found that Wi-Fi was becoming an inseparable part of their usage patterns (CP: Wi-Fi reliance increasing with growing mobile broadband adoption). DeviceScape provides Wi-Fi offload services to operators so it’s certainly not a neutral party in the Wi-Fi offload debate, but it’s findings certainly don’t contradict what operators are seeing themselves as they sell more Wi-Fi embedded phones:

— nearly 90 percent of smartphone owners supplement their wireless data plan with Wi-Fi, at home and on the go;

— 73 percent of respondents said they'd considering switching carriers if faced with a data cap; and

— 82 percent of respondents expect access to Wi-Fi to be included in their wireless subscription.