BOINGO TO LAUNCH INITIATIVE AIMED AT CARRIER MARKET

Boingo Wireless, the largest aggregator of Wi-Fi hot spots, is launching a carrier services program this week intended to simplify both the strategic and administrative hurdles confronting telcos, mobile carriers and ISPs as they look to offer Wi-Fi services.

The offering, Boingo Platform Services, is based on a new version of Boingo's client software that allows carriers to private label access in all 1200 hot spots in Boingo's worldwide directory. The software also includes a hot spot sniffer, a built-in virtual private network, and a profile manager that allows users to set up home and office connections.

“It's something we've been working on incorporating into the software for about six months,” said Sky Dayton, founder and CEO of Boingo Wireless.

Also, as a nod to mobile/Wi-Fi convergence, Boingo will further enhance the platform later this year with sniffing capability for 2.5G wide area networks, including GPRS, CDMA, 1XRTT and iDEN. Wireless data users will see both available hot spots and mobile data networks as they are detected by the Boingo sniffer software, and they will be able to prioritize different network types.

Boingo's platform direction recognizes that carriers are more likely to become Wi-Fi access resellers than hot spot owners. “There are so many hot spots and the market has become so fragmented that no single carrier could own more than ten percent of them,” Dayton said.

As part of this week's announcement, Boingo also will unveil EarthLink and FiberLink as the first service provider customers.

Despite recent rumblings about a Wi-Fi market shake-up following the demise of hot spot operator Joltage and news that T-Mobile would cut prices at its Starbucks hot spots, Dayton advised taking these developments in stride. “There's still an elasticity in price and demand as there is with any service,” he said. “But Wi-Fi is something that, if you don't offer it, it could be a major threat to your business.”