Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/07/at_t_wayport/
AT&T ups Wi-Fi ante with Wayport acquisition
20,000 hotspots at home, 80,000 worldwide
Posted in Telecoms, 7th November 2008 14:53 GMT
Free webcast: Service level monitoring and management
AT&T has bought up Wi-Fi hotspot provider Wayport for $275m, hugely increasing the number of places that subscribers with an iPhone or Blackberry Bold can get free access.
The companies have worked together before; Wayport provided backhaul and management to AT&T hotspots. But Wayport always focused on providing hotspots in hotels, hospitals and chain-stores, notably McDonalds, carving a niche out for itself - one that AT&T now owns.
This is ironic, given that AT&T was one of the partners in the ill-fated Cometa Networks. Cometa was supposed to fit every McDonalds in America with Wi-Fi back in 2002, but by 2004 the golden arches were being fitted up with Waypoint, leaving Cometa with only 250 locations and an unused logo (http://gemsres.com/photos/story/res/41250/fig1.jpg).
But if someone else succeeds where you've failed the answer is to buy them out - ideally when the economy makes acquisitions cheap. That way you can wait a decade, then paint the whole thing as a coherent plan by merging the projects together in history.
ABI Research, commenting on the deal, points out that while AT&T customers with their Blackberry Bold handsets will get free Wi-Fi, those who switch to Verizon for a Blackberry Storm won't even have Wi-Fi connectivity.
Including roaming locations this gives AT&T 80,000 hotspots around the world, assuming those roaming deals make the transition from Wayport. However, it's still debatable how useful Wi-Fi is on a phone. In areas with decent 3G coverage the hotspot model is largely redundant. The greater speed is hard to exploit on a mobile phone screen, but where coverage is less ubiquitous there is still room for Wi-Fi. ®