Balancing act of consumer needs and return on network investment
Marc Patterson, VP of product for Boingo Wireless, told RCR Wireless News that public Wi-Fi as a service is undergoing a “pendulum swing” at the moment, as customers want free service but venue owners need to offset network costs.
In an interview at the PCIA Wireless Infrastructure Show, Patterson explained that the next evolution of public Wi-Fi access will come in the form of tiered service offerings tailored to a customers’ needs.
“One of the things we realized when we were deploying Wi-Fi networks is the Wi-Fi requirements for your typical consumer or business user varies very widely,” he said. “You may be there with your kids and you want to be able to download a movie quickly. You may be a business user who cares very much about security but also has a variety of different applications that you need to run at the same time.”
Patterson said that’s where Boingo’s SMART network comes in; the initialism breaks down as secure, multidevice, analytics-driven, responsive and tiered.
“The idea of the SMART network is to really be able to tailor the experience you have in public Wi-Fi to what your business needs are, and, more importantly, what your device needs are.”
That essentially equates to differently priced options with different authentication, bandwidth and other components.
Patterson detailed the shifting face of public Wi-Fi as the demand has rapidly increased to near-ubiquitous.
“We’ve gone from an era in which, when public Wi-Fi first came out, it was always assumed you’d pay for it. Then we saw this era happen where there was this drive toward making everything free. That’s now driven the widespread adoption of ad-based and other kinds of enabled-response Wi-Fi experiences. The big question is: Where is this all going to go?”
He said it’s going to be a “balancing act” that from Boingo’s perspective is encapsulated in a tiered, needs-based offering.
“It’s going to be very interesting to see how this all plays out,” he said.
