The hotspot market is crowded with new entries, all in search of their piece of what they believe will be a huge market pie. Running a reliable, secure, scalable and manageable hotspot service is a far cry from installing a Wi-Fi gateway in your family room. But despite the challenges, many creative minds are at work trying to make a go of it. The Wi-Fi hotspot market comprises many different players:
• Hotspot wholesalers, like Cometa, plan to build out service in various venues and make those services available to retailers, which will handle marketing and fulfillment.
• Established cellular carriers, like AT&T Wireless,
T-Mobile and Verizon, understand the potential benefits in high-density environments and feel they can offer hotspots as a complement to 2.5G and 3G service, with seamless roaming between the networks.
• Service aggregators, like Boingo Wireless, Gric Communications and iPass, don't own hotspots but rather provide access to a range of partner networks, thus assembling a much larger footprint.
• National and regional WISPs (wireless Internet service providers), such as Hotspotzz, Surf and Sip and Wayport, are convinced there is a viable way to make money building a network one venue at a time.
• Free-access WISPs, many undoubtedly distant relatives of the FreeNet dial-up movement, aim to provide free Wi-Fi services to the masses.
For service aggregators and regional WISPs, there is significant pressure to partner through roaming agreements, a strategy that increases coverage footprints in what is often a mutually beneficial manner. However, as we learned in our RFI (see "Common Goals, Unique Strengths," page 43), it's not uncommon for the partnership to be one-way in nature. The fee an aggregator pays to allow its customers access to a carrier's network does not necessarily grant that carrier's customers access to the aggregator's other partner networks. That's one reason why aggregators offer the largest coverage footprint, an appealing model for organizations whose staff travel extensively. But you can expect to pay a premium for those services.
The Hotspot Value Chain
To deliver the optimal user experience, the plethora of specialty players in today's hotspot market must find a level of cooperation that includes adherence to a common set of technical and implementation standards and, in some cases, significant trade-offs between ideals and pragmatic solutions. The most publicized effort was advanced in February by the Wi-Fi Alliance's WISPr working group, written by representatives of Gemtek (a wireless infrastructure provider), iPass (an aggregator) and Nomadix (a hotspot-gateway provider). Rather than designing a sophisticated set of roaming standards, WISPr is working within the context of existing standards to define best practices for hotspot networks. Most of the vendors that participated in our RFI have pledged support for WISPr.
By The Numbers
• 31m: Number of frequent users of public WLAN hotspots worldwide by 2007
• 35m: Number of infrequent users
• 120k: Number of WLAN hotspot gateways by 2007
• 9b: Revenue from WLAN hotspot users by 2007
Source: Gartner
From a technical standpoint, WISPr calls for using a combination of HTTP, SSL and RADIUS to provide secure authentication, authorization and accounting services. Although participants must follow some implementation standards, others are just recommended or optional. For example, while providers are required to offer Web authentication services, they have the option to use so-called smart clients that add functionality like enhanced security, service browsing and hotspot directories and can make access more transparent to users.
Although the transmission of authentication credentials is protected by SSL encryption, WISPr-compliant systems do not provide privacy services. Instead, WISPr encourages the use of VPN clients for secure connections. That's a prudent compromise in the absence of workable alternatives, but the WISPr group clearly envisions a day when support for the IEEE's 802.1x standard will overcome those limitations, serving as both an authentication protocol and as a vehicle for managing dynamic session keys. WISPr provides a clear explanation about how 802.1x will be integrated into the system, including explicit support for TLS and TTLS authentication types (see "The New Face of Authentication", and "802.1x Explored").
There are serious questions about whether either of those authentication types will win out in the market, but one can hardly expect WISPr to solve that problem. In any case, the system is flexible enough to support whatever standard eventually emerges.
Dave Molta is a senior technology editor at Network Computing. He is also an assistant professor in the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University and director of the Center for Emerging Network Technologies. Molta's experience includes 15 years in IT and network management. Write to him at dmolta@nwc.com.
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