Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Passpoint™ adds value to service provider networks today and sets the stage for strategic advantage in the future

New study illustrates subscriber demand and expanding business opportunity

Austin, Texas, September 24, 2013 – With smartphone and tablet usage continuing to explode, operator-deployed Wi-Fi® networks are playing an increasing role in keeping users connected on the go. A new study conducted in Europe on behalf of Wi-Fi Alliance® indicates that advanced features such as seamless authentication, on-site enrollment of additional devices, and Wi-Fi roaming present operators with compelling opportunities to drive business value.

The survey, conducted among more than 2000 users of both smartphones and tablets in France, Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, illustrates the hunger among users for a more seamless experience in public Wi-Fi networks. Respondents were given a description of the seamless user experience enabled by Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Passpoint equipment. Among the findings:

Eighty-four percent of respondents are interested in having seamless discovery and authentication in hotspots
Seventy-four percent are willing to switch service providers in order to gain access to these advanced features
Ninety-one percent are likely to stay with their current service provider if they offered a service which incorporated these features

“Passpoint equipment is already delivering value to operators, and this value increases as Wi-Fi becomes central to fixed and mobile service provider business strategies, ,” said Wi-Fi Alliance president and CEO Edgar Figueroa. “Wi-Fi Alliance is expanding Passpoint to deliver even more advanced features to meet operators’ critical business objectives well into the future.”

The carrier Wi-Fi opportunity extends well beyond smartphones. Tablet usage in homes and on public Wi-Fi networks is on the rise and approaching rates similar to those of smartphone usage. According to the study, more than one-third of users connect tablets to public Wi-Fi networks today and fifty-seven percent reported that they expect to connect their tablets via hotspot networks three years from now. The next release of Passpoint, planned for 2014, adds functionality to enable non-SIM device enrollment on-the-spot, extending user subscriptions to additional devices such as tablets, and enabling the enrollment of new subscribers.

Seamless Wi-Fi roaming is currently in trials among numerous service providers worldwide, and it presents another opportunity for service providers. Ninety-two percent of the survey respondents connect either a tablet or smartphone while traveling, leveraging a combination of cellular and Wi-Fi networks both within and outside their home service provider’s control. Fifty-eight percent of respondents stated they would be willing to pay more for a Wi-Fi roaming offering from their provider, and eighty percent agreed with the statement “I wish my service provider could be with me when I travel.”

“With innovations coming from the industry, the opportunity for advanced Wi-Fi to drive business value for service providers is clear,” said Mike Roberts, Principal Analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media. “Passpoint-certified equipment and inter-provider Wi-Fi roaming enable fixed and mobile providers to add new Wi-Fi-only subscribers, expand share of wallet among existing subscribers, and deliver a roaming experience that exceeds subscriber expectations.”

Wi-Fi Alliance has certified an extensive array of Passpoint network equipment and about 75 Passpoint client devices, including a diverse range of smartphones and tablets from a variety of vendors. Recent deployments of Passpoint-enabled networks demonstrate the growing support for delivery of a seamless user experience and commercialization of a unified roaming approach.

Technology enablers and business cases for carrier Wi-Fi are detailed in a new white paper, Carrier Wi-Fi®: A futureproof approach to expanded public Wi-Fi. The paper is available for download here.

About Wi-Fi Alliance®
www.wi-fi.org
Wi-Fi Alliance® is a global non-profit industry association of hundreds of leading companies devoted to seamless connectivity. With technology development, market building, and regulatory programs, Wi-Fi Alliance has enabled widespread adoption of Wi-Fi® worldwide. The Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ program was launched in March 2000. It provides a widely-recognized designation of interoperability and quality, and it helps to ensure that Wi-Fi-enabled products deliver the best user experience. Wi-Fi Alliance has certified more than 15,000 products, encouraging the expanded use of Wi-Fi products and services in new and established markets.

Wi-Fi®, Wi-Fi Alliance®, WMM®, Wi-Fi Protected Access® (WPA), WiGig®, Wi-Fi Direct®, the Wi-Fi CERTIFIED logo, the Wi-Fi logo, the Wi-Fi ZONE logo and the Wi-Fi Protected Setup logo are registered trademarks of Wi-Fi Alliance. Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™, Wi-Fi Protected Setup™, Wi-Fi Multimedia™, WPA2™, Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Passpoint™, Passpoint™, Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Miracast™, Miracast™, Wi-Fi ZONE™, WiGig CERTIFIED™, the Wi-Fi Alliance logo, and the WiGig CERTIFIED logo are trademarks of Wi-Fi Alliance.

Contact:
Karl Stetson
Edelman for Wi-Fi Alliance
Karl.stetson@zenogroup.com
206-297-5943

Methodological note:

The Wi-Fi Alliance survey was conducted by Edelman Berland between August 20-30, 2013 among more than 2,000 consumers over 18 years of age in France, Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom who have multiple mobile devices.

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Seamless Wi-Fi® access takes one giant step forward

Passpoint, Operators

Last week, Boingo launched a new Next Generation Hotspot network at Chicago O’Hare International Airport that is the latest step toward a future of public Wi-Fi as easy to use as your cellphone.

Over the last several years, the Wireless Broadband Alliance, Wi-Fi Alliance, and the GSM Association have worked together on a set of specifications and guidelines to enable seamless roaming over Wi-Fi in much the same way that cell phones today seamlessly roam from city to city and country to country. You turn on your phone, it finds the nearest tower, and they negotiate access without you having to do anything special.

Why is this important?

Six years ago (June 2007) Apple launched the iPhone, and the Internet – and how we use it – changed forever. No longer the exclusive domain of business travelers lugging laptops from airport to hotel to cafe, public Wi-Fi started to become a more egalitarian resource. Anyone and everyone with a pocket-sized web device now whips out their phone to check their email, update their social network status, scan the latest scores, or prove the actual quote from that movie that everyone tries to quote but always gets wrong.

To date, this has sometimes been complicated, since there are hundreds of different Wi-Fi providers – some large like Boingo and AT&T, some smaller like the individual coffee shops themselves. The user experience as they move from hotspot to hotspot varies. Boingo’s Wi-Finder app eliminates a lot of this complication, but still involves some user interaction to make sure the device selects and logs into right network.

The new standards-based networks – using Passpoint-certified hardware (Wi-Fi Alliance certification based on Hotspot 2.0 specification) and Next Generation Hotspot network configurations (Wireless Broadband Alliance guidelines) – enable the phone to identify and negotiate with the network while it’s still in a user’s pocket. By the time they take the phone out to look at it, it has already connected and authenticated to the network, establishing a secure, WPA2-encrypted connection with the hotspot.

Right now, the Next Generation Hotspot network launched in Chicago is being made available to mobile carriers, hotspot operators and smartphone manufacturers who want to test this functionality as part of their product development process. While only a few phones today can take advantage of these specialty networks, more phones will be coming to market and with them the creation of a critical mass of users who can capitalize on the improved user experience of seamless Wi-Fi access.

In the long run, we believe Next Generation Hotspots will be most widely used by a wide range of service providers who have already added public Wi-Fi access to their existing Internet services or provided as a bonus by hardware manufacturers to entice you to buy their devices.

You see much of the same type of activity today, with companies like Time Warner Cable, Comcast, and Verizon providing public Wi-Fi access for their home broadband customers, and carriers like AT&T using their Wi-Fi hotspots to supplement subscribers’ monthly data usage in places like Starbucks and McDonald’s. Likewise, Samsung has included public Wi-Fi access with their latest lineup of tablets and has previously included public Wi-Fi access with network-enabled cameras, and Nintendo enables DS users to access public Wi-Fi in many popular locations.

With the Next Generation Hotspot networks, and their use of Passpoint-certified equipment, that type of network access can easily be extended more broadly to include roaming agreements with multiple providers through standards-based technologies that will be built into the phone, camera, or other Wi-Fi enabled device, especially devices that lack browser interfaces and are currently unable to access public Wi-Fi. By eliminating custom software solutions and turning to standards-based functionality built right into the Wi-Fi chipset, more users will have access to more networks with more of their devices.

And that seems like a win-win-win-win for network operators, service providers, device manufacturers, and users alike.

The statements and opinions by each Wi-Fi Alliance member and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions or views of Wi-Fi Alliance or any other member. Wi-Fi Alliance is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information provided by any member in posting to or commenting on this blog. Concerns should be directed to info@wi-fi.org.

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Extended battery life with 802.11ac

Wi-Fi CERTIFIED ac, Operators

This post originally ran in February 2013 on the Aerohive blog where Matthew Gast has his own author blog.

Getting out and talking with customers is one of the activities that keeps me fresh. Some of my best ideas have come directly out of customer conversations, which is one of the reasons you’ll always find me willing to speak at one of our Hive User Group events.

On my last trip out to see customers, I gave my current talk about 802.11ac. At the very last minute at the Philadelphia-area event, I noticed that the restaurant was playing Tony Bennett singing “The Best is Yet to Come,” and I couldn’t resist re-titling my talk and throwing in a picture of Tony to express the same sentiment about Wi-Fi.

While there are many reasons that the best days of Wi-Fi with 802.11ac are yet to come, I’ll focus on one in this post that I haven’t really written about before: improved battery life.

Yes, battery life. 802.11ac will help extend battery life in mobile devices. You read that right. Heck, earlier this week, HTC announced that the HTC One (picture right) is coming with 802.11ac.

The major components of a Wi-Fi interface, in the order that an incoming signal hits them, are:

The antenna system. This one is obvious. You can’t receive radio waves without an antenna.
Analog processing. The signal that comes off the antenna is very weak. A high-quality amplifier is used o boost the signal off the antenna system to feed to the radio chip. Because the signal is so weak, one of the most important attributes of this first amplifier is that it introduce as little noise into the amplified signal as possible. Amplifiers take some power, but not as much as you might think compared to components further along the chain.
The digital signal processing (DSP) stage. There are multiple components here – each antenna’s received signal goes through demodulation and through a Fourier transform, and then multiple spatial streams are pulled apart. The computational power increases dramatically with multiple streams. For a single stream, this step is a straightforward single Fourier transform. With multiple streams, it’s a Fourier transform per stream, possibly with complex applied mathematics to get at each spatial stream.
Decoding the recovered bit stream to correct errors and passing the frame to higher software layers.

What kills battery life is not the amplifier in the analog section. Yes, amplifiers do require power, but the real power hog in multi-stream MIMO systems is the digital processing used to recover parallel spatial streams. If you eliminate the requirement to receive multiple spatial streams, the power required in the digital stage drops dramatically.

If you are making a mobile device, the easiest way to reduce power requirements is to build a single-stream device to minimize the power drain in the DSP stage. Not surprisingly, that’s exactly what HTC did with their new phone. Yes, it’s 802.11ac, but it’s single-stream 802.11ac.

With single-stream 802.11ac, the HTC One can reduce the time needed to send or receive data and increase battery. Although the digital stage for 11ac is slightly more complicated than it would be for 11n, that is more than made up for by the savings that come from running the analog amplifier for shorter periods of time.

(Note that my analysis depends on this being single-stream 11ac and single-stream 11n. If you need a complex multi-stream digital stage, all bets are off because you need much more intensive digital processing to make multiple streams work.)

With Mobile World Congress happening next week in beautiful Barcelona, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a number of additional phones announced with 802.11ac.

When power-conserving devices like battery-powered handhelds are being built with 802.11ac, you can tell that we’re on a roll. As the immortal Tony Bennett put it, the best is yet to come …

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Client adoption for 802.11ac wireless technology

Wi-Fi CERTIFIED ac, Operators

This is an excerpt from a post on the Cisco Mobility blog site: http://blogs.cisco.com/wireless

With the adoption of new technology such as 802.11ac, the industry sometimes can become a farmer’s almanac of predictions when it comes to when and what devices will support 802.11ac. There are a lot of consumer devices such as home routers with 802.11ac support, as well as a selection of laptops offering support for the new standard. In terms of enterprise-class access points supporting 802.11ac, Cisco, along with a few other vendors, recently announced product support for 802.11ac with the expectation of more product announcements to come later this year. As for the other leg in the chair, there have not been many announcements regarding the support of 802.11ac for smartphones or tablets. We now have a couple of smartphone vendors throwing their hat into the 802.11ac ring which makes things very exciting from an adoption standpoint.

Smartphones with 802.11ac support can certainly be considered one of the next phases in the early adoption story for the technology, following consumer-based APs, laptops and enterprise wireless access points. The further adoption of this standard is also good for vendors of consumer equipment as well as enterprise customers. Whether you are a consumer or someone who supports an enterprise network, 802.11ac technology will provide benefits such as expanded bandwidth and higher client density, all on the less crowded 5 GHz band. 802.11ac technology includes tools to combat the bandwidth hungry applications that continue to grow in our world.

One of the first industries to take full advantage of 802.11ac will be higher education. Students who are typically early adopters of these smartphones will most likely show up to class next September with their 802.11ac supported smartphone or laptop and expect all the promises of higher performance that 802.11ac brings. Healthcare and service providers will also gain the benefits of 802.11ac technology adoption by providing device connectivity for bandwidth hungry applications such as HD video streaming or faster file transfers with medical imaging. Tying this all together will be the further adoption of 802.11ac technology in access points and client devices. However, there will still be a lot of rumors about different support on a variety of products coming to a Google search near you. As more and more vendors solidify their plans for this emerging technology, the next few months will be an exciting ride for those who not only follow this technology but also will come to rely on it for the future.

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The mobile revolution changing the Wi-Fi® technology adoption cycle

Wi-Fi CERTIFIED ac, Operators

The way we interact with technology is changing. The mobile market is experiencing incredible growth as it begins to overtake other segments, and mobile data usage is skyrocketing to levels that could exceed the capability of wireless operators—fortunately something Wi-Fi® can help ease. As this surge in mobile continues, the way new Wi-Fi technology is being adopted is changing with it. Network operators and smartphone OEMs are starting to incorporate new technology far earlier than they ever had before. Smartphones are poised to benefit greatly from the latest in Wi-Fi, and they are also set to become one of the main drivers of 802.11ac.

Every three or four years, Wi-Fi experiences a major generational upgrade of its core underlying networking technology. We have seen this during the move from 802.11b to .11g and then on toward .11n, and that process is happening once again with 802.11ac. Thanks to Wi-Fi Alliance®, these generational upgrades have been mostly smooth experiences, even when Wi-Fi certification programs have been rolled out prior to the finalization of the .11 standard, and in part due to maintaining backward compatibility with previous generations.

We have also all seen how the typical adoption cycle has played out for Wi-Fi-enabled devices. Usually retail networking solutions, such as APs, broadband gateways and adapters, are the first to upgrade to the new generation. PCs follow, with enterprise and fixed CE coming next. Mobile handheld devices have historically been among the last to receive the new technology. This is due to the relatively conservative nature of network operators, who play a role in specifying technologies in smartphones, and the more stringent qualification cycles of smartphone OEMs.

However, as the market shifts, so too does the adoption cycle. With some very compelling uses for mobile devices, such as Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Miracast™, and with fierce competition for technology leadership in the smartphone market, this dynamic is changing. We are already seeing smartphones, such as the ZTE Grand Memo, shipping with 802.11ac at the same time, or even ahead of, many other product segments.

With the new Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ ac certification program, Wi-Fi Alliance will play a key role in ensuring the interoperability of mobile devices with APs and other 802.11ac devices. With the mobile segment adopting the latest Wi-Fi technology so much earlier than ever before, they will not be the ones adapting to the ecosystem. Rather, smartphones will be among the forefront of the new generation.

Smartphones have already become the driver of innovation in technology worldwide and Wi-Fi is no exception. Wi-Fi is a clear area where the immense impact of mobile on the high-tech industry can be seen, and mobile’s importance will only grow over time.

Wi-Fi® takes center stage as capacity expansion solution for operator networks

Independent research: Wi-Fi delivers the same capacity for half the operators’ Total Cost of Ownership compared to LTE

Austin, Texas, May 21, 2013 – Wi-Fi has emerged as a cost-effective solution for operators who face serious capacity problems on their mobile networks. Small cells have come into sharp focus as operators contend with data traffic growth exceeding 60 percent annually and particularly difficult coverage challenges in dense environments.

Independent research released this week analyzes small-cell economics and confirms that when examined on CAPEX, OPEX, and per-bit capacity, Wi-Fi nodes are compelling as compared with both 3G and 4G nodes.

The economic model and results are detailed in “Carrier Wi-Fi for Mobile Operators: A TCO Model Assessing the Cost Benefits to Wi-Fi and Cellular Small-Cell Joint Deployments,” developed by Senza Fili Consulting and commissioned by Wi-Fi Alliance®. The model takes a long-term view of per-bit Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for Wi-Fi, 3G and 4G small cell technologies. Among the findings:

Per-bit TCO for Wi-Fi is about half of LTE and ten per cent of 3G small cells
Comparison against even the most advanced licensed small cells does not change the picture: Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ n and newest-generation Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ ac, entering the market this year, outperform LTE and LTE-A on per-bit TCO
Operators need not choose either 3G/4G or Wi-Fi. When a combined Wi-Fi/cellular solution is deployed in a single location, per-bit TCO is dramatically reduced

“Given their performance, capacity and cost-effectiveness, Wi-Fi small cells are a compelling element of a variety of coverage strategies and operator business models,” said Monica Paolini, President of Senza Fili Consulting. “Operators can deploy Wi-Fi and licensed small-cell solutions in separate environments, together on the same nodes, or investing exclusively in Wi-Fi small cells ahead of 4G maturity.”

The Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Passpoint™ program, introduced last year, has created an industry standard that streamlines network access and eliminates the need for users to find and authenticate a network each time they connect. The end result is a cellular-like experience for Wi-Fi, with devices having the ability to automatically connect and roam across multiple networks. Since its introduction, more than 100 smartphones, tablets and access points have been certified.

“Operators have embraced Wi-Fi technology and are deploying it in a variety of ways,” said Edgar Figueroa, president and CEO of the Wi-Fi Alliance. “Wi-Fi Alliance has introduced a range of solutions to meet operators’ needs, including Passpoint. We are working across the industry to contribute to the development of end-to-end solutions for operator networks.”

Some mobile operators have implemented interim solutions to roaming, in order to extend Wi-Fi coverage to one another’s subscribers. Meanwhile, the worldwide transition to industry-standard
Wi-Fi roaming is underway, with multi-operator trials on Passpoint-certified equipment taking place now. Wi-Fi Alliance has collaborated with other industry groups to ensure the building blocks are in place to create a truly global Wi-Fi roaming experience.

For more information about the Passpoint certification program, operator Wi-Fi solutions, and subscriber demand for a differentiated mobile Wi-Fi experience, visit www.wi-fi.org/operators.

About Wi-Fi Alliance®
www.wi-fi.org
Wi-Fi Alliance® is a global non-profit industry association of hundreds of leading companies devoted to seamless connectivity. With technology development, market building, and regulatory programs, Wi-Fi Alliance has enabled widespread adoption of Wi-Fi® worldwide. The Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ program was launched in March 2000. It provides a widely-recognized designation of interoperability and quality, and it helps to ensure that Wi-Fi-enabled products deliver the best user experience. Wi-Fi Alliance has certified more than 15,000 products, encouraging the expanded use of Wi-Fi products and services in new and established markets.

Wi-Fi®, Wi-Fi Alliance®, WMM®, Wi-Fi Protected Access® (WPA), the Wi-Fi CERTIFIED logo, the Wi-Fi logo, the Wi-Fi ZONE logo and the Wi-Fi Protected Setup logo are registered trademarks of Wi-Fi Alliance. Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™, Wi-Fi Direct™, Wi-Fi Protected Setup™, Wi-Fi Multimedia™, WPA2™, Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Passpoint™, Passpoint™, Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Miracast™, Miracast™, Wi-Fi ZONE™ and the Wi-Fi Alliance logo are trademarks of Wi-Fi Alliance. WiGig® is a registered trademark of the WiGig Alliance.

Media Contact:
Karl Stetson
Edelman for Wi-Fi Alliance
206-715-4416
karl.stetson@edelman.com

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Operators Passpoint

Wireless Broadband Alliance and Wi-Fi Alliance® Collaborate on Hotspot Innovations

PARIS, FRANCE: June 21, 2011 - The Wi-Fi Alliance and Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) have announced plans to collaborate in order to harmonize their programs related to Wi-Fi hotspot ease of use and roaming. WBA's inter-operator Wi-Fi roaming efforts and Wi-Fi Alliance's planned certification program for Wi-Fi equipment will be developed with close coordination between the two groups to help ensure the best user experience.

The Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ hotspot certification program is designed to create the technology and testing programs necessary to allow Wi-Fi devices to easily connect at hotspots in a security-protected, interoperable fashion by streamlining network selection and access. Wi-Fi Alliance members are working to define technologies and certification requirements for both Wi-Fi infrastructure devices as well as endpoints like handsets, tablets and notebooks. The planned launch of the Wi-Fi CERTIFIED hotspot certification program is targeted for the middle of 2012, with preliminary testing activities expected to begin later this year.

The WBA's Next Generation Hotspot (NGH) program defines interoperability requirements for hotspot and 3G/4G operators. The program includes development of comprehensive operator guidelines and an ecosystem trial to facilitate migration to Next Generation Hotspots. The NGH program builds on the Wi-Fi-based inter-operator roaming and related business best practices developed by WBA. It enables business relationships among various network operators to deliver seamless Wi-Fi access and facilitate offload from licensed networks. A trial launched under the program this week between leading operators and vendors will address seamless, secure auto-authentication on multiple operator networks.

The two organizations will coordinate on testing methodologies and models, and will share information about their respective specifications and technologies to ensure that the programs are aligned. Members from the groups will also collaborate on the brand identity for hotspots implementing the solutions, enabling end users to easily identify products and hotspots based on the advanced specifications.

"Working together to harmonize these two programs helps ensure that there will be a complete solution to evolve the user experience in Wi-Fi hotspots around the world," said Edgar Figueroa, CEO of the Wi-Fi Alliance. "The Wi-Fi Alliance's work to bring streamlined access and WPA2™ security to hotspot environments is well complemented by the work in WBA to enable seamless Wi-Fi roaming."

"With the number of hotspots growing worldwide, and the increasing importance of Wi-Fi to service providers' strategies, this is a crucial time for our organizations to work together," said Shrikant Shenwai, CEO of the Wireless Broadband Alliance. "WBA's Next Generation Hotspot program aims to deliver a seamless Wi-Fi user experience across operators globally, and the cooperation with Wi-Fi Alliance will maximize the benefits of innovation for end users, manufacturers and service providers."

About the Wi-Fi Alliance
http://www.wi-fi.org/
The Wi-Fi Alliance is a global non-profit industry association of hundreds of leading companies devoted to the proliferation of Wi-Fi technology across devices and market segments. With technology development, market building, and regulatory programs, the Wi-Fi Alliance has enabled widespread adoption of Wi-Fi worldwide.

The Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ program was launched in March 2000. It provides a widely-recognized designation of interoperability and quality and it helps to ensure that Wi-Fi enabled products deliver the best user experience. The Wi-Fi Alliance has completed more than 10,000 product certifications to date, encouraging the expanded use of Wi-Fi products and services in new and established markets.

Wi-Fi®, Wi-Fi Alliance®, WMM®, Wi-Fi Protected Access® (WPA), the Wi-Fi CERTIFIED logo, the Wi-Fi logo, the Wi-Fi ZONE logo and the Wi-Fi Protected Setup logo are registered trademarks of the Wi-Fi Alliance. Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™, Wi-Fi Direct™, Wi-Fi Protected Setup™, Wi-Fi Multimedia™, WPA2™ and the Wi-Fi Alliance logo are trademarks of the Wi-Fi Alliance.

About the Wireless Broadband Alliance
http://www.wballiance.com/
The Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) was established in 2003 by a group of visionary operators as a global forum for wireless broadband ecosystem. Its founders and current membership includes mobile, broadband and integrated operators who view Wi-Fi as a strategic complement to other networks such as 3G/UMTS, WiMAX, DSL, Cable, and more.

The mission of WBA is to facilitate adoption of Wi-Fi enabled services through improvements in user experience, interoperability and service delivery across technologies, devices and networks. By leveraging its unique membership mix and strong operator heritage, WBA seeks to engage the ecosystem for enabling a seamless Wi-Fi experience for the benefit of the end-users. The WBA has developed a range of technical enablers and commercial frameworks, including the award-winning WRiX (Wireless Roaming Intermediary Exchange), WISPr 2.0 (enhancements to the Wi-Fi roaming best practices available publicly) amongst others. These have been instrumental in driving global Wi-Fi roaming. The leading operators and roaming providers have adopted these to successfully deliver a consistent Wi-Fi roaming experience and to reduce implementation time and effort. These enablers are being adopted by wider ecosystem to integrate Wi-Fi across technologies for 3G to Wi-Fi offload and WiMAX-Wi-Fi interworking opportunities. The WBA actively collaborates with other industry forums to enhance and harmonise wireless broadband roaming standards.

The members of the WBA include an influential group of 57 leading wireless broadband industry players from around the world. Together, the operator members of WBA own a global footprint of 220,000 hotpots, spanning key markets, cities and locations across Europe, Asia Pacific and Americas, with a pool of above 350 million subscribers. The current Board members of WBA include AT&T, BT, Boingo, Cisco, Deutsche Telekom, KT, Orange France, True Internet and TMN/Portugal Telecom.

Follow Wi-Fi Alliance on Twitter: twitter.com/wifialliance
Wi-Fi Alliance News RSS Feed: http://www.wi-fi.org/newsroom_rss.php

Follow Wireless Broadband Alliance on Twitter: twitter.com/#!/wballiance
Wireless Broadband Alliance News RSS Feed: www.wballiance.com/newsroom/featured-news.html

Wi-Fi Alliance Contacts:
Karl Stetson
Edelman USA for Wi-Fi Alliance
+1-206-268-2215
karl.stetson@edelman.com

Matthew Whalley
Edelman London for Wi-Fi Alliance
+44 (0)20 3047 2325
matthew.whalley@edelman.com

Sandrine Cormary
Edelman France for Wi-Fi Alliance
+33 (0)1 56 69 73 86
sandrine.cormary@edelman.com

Wireless Broadband Alliance Contacts:
Martin Dyan
Fishburn Hedges for Wireless Broadband Alliance
+44 207 544 3021
martin.dyan@fishburn-hedges.co.uk

Charlie Howard
Fishburn Hedges for Wireless Broadband Alliance
+44 207 544 3037
charlie.howard@fishburn-hedges.co.uk

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Operators Passpoint

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