Changing the landscape
Mobile operator O2 has announced plans to: "deploy a market-changing public Wi-Fi platform in the UK," which it will call O2 Wifi.
The nature of the scheme is a bit unclear from the press release, as it talks about creating a bunch of hotspots in partnership with ‘key venue owners' that will be ‘free to customers'. Apparently access will be available regardless of mobile or wireless provider so the customers in question must be those of the venue.
If that's the case, then the roll-out of genuinely free-to-all, secure Wi-Fi over a number of hotspots that O2 claims will be "at least double the number of premium hotspots currently offered by BT Openzone and The Cloud combined by 2013," seems like a good thing.
"O2 is integrating new layers of technology into the existing network to enable a seamless and sustained customer experience," said O2's Tim Sefton. "We are technology-agnostic and driven entirely by our customers' needs. We believe that services should be delivered in the best possible way, across multiple networks, supported by different technologies."
Without in any way questioning O2's philanthropic instincts, we have to wonder what's in it for O2. In the release O2 refers to: "bringing together O2 Wifi with the capabilities of O2 Media and O2 Money to offer the potential to deliver relevant timely content that customers want in a format that suits them." In other words, ad-funded.
The other interest for O2 and, indeed, all mobile operators, is a potential reduction in the amount of data traffic their mobile networks have to accommodate. If most public places have Wi-Fi hotspots that are very easy for smartphone/tablet/notebook users to access, people will presumably access the Internet over mobile networks less.
This is somewhat ironic. A decade ago the mobile operators paid our government zillions of pounds in order to get 3G licenses and then spent the intervening time trying desperately to get their customers to use their data networks. Nor that such use has exploded, they seem to be preoccupied with capping that use and seeking alternatives.
