Sprint, Boingo Wi-Fi deal to provide seamless connections at 35 locations
Sprint continues to push its Wi-Fi agenda, announcing a deal to offer customers access to Boingo Wireless’ cadre of hot spots at 35 airport locations across the country.
The multiyear partnership will see Wi-Fi-equipped Sprint devices automatically connect to the Boingo hot spots should their cellular connection run into problems. The process is enabled by Boingo’s Passpoint Secure auto-authentication process that is said to provide for seamless connectivity. The two companies said they tested the service using “millions” of Sprint handsets and that connections will include WPA2 encryption technology.
Customers who have their devices auto-connect to the Boingo Wi-Fi hot spots will not be charged for the connection or dinged for usage.
“With Wi-Fi being the world’s largest wireless ecosystem, we view it as a highly complementary layer to our network,” said Sprint CTO Stephen Bye in a statement. “By enabling customers to move seamlessly between secure Wi-Fi and cellular, our customers will have a better mobile experience in more locations, all while lowering their cost of data usage.”
The deal does not specifically mention voice calling over the Wi-Fi connection, but Sprint recently expanded its focus on Wi-Fi calling to Apple’s iPhone lineup. The carrier has been a proponent of Wi-Fi calling services, having placed greater emphasis on the option ahead of a slower move toward voice over LTE.
Sprint has been working through network updates that have seen user experience take a hit. The carrier has said it is now through most of that work and is beginning to see better network performance that is also helping to moderate customer churn.
The latest deal with Boingo also looks to close a loop between the two companies as Boingo in 2007 purchased Sprint’s Wi-Fi network at seven airport locations. That deal included a roaming component that allowed Sprint customers to gain access to Boingo’s hot spot network.
Boingo earlier this year said it signed a deal with a U.S.-based tier-one carrier that included shipment of 40 million handsets enabled with Wi-Fi offload onto Boingo’s network of hot spots. No word of that deal was a pre-announcement of the latest Sprint partnership.
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