Wifi is taking over the world – or so it sometimes seems from a consumer standpoint. Venues from churches to coffee shops are offering internet access to customers as an added enticement, and many homes and offices have also installed hotspots as laptops slowly edge out desktop machines.
One of the biggest UK providers of wifi is BT's Openzone, which has agreements with several hotel chains, including Thistle and Hilton hotels. It believes that many people now choose hotels based on the quality of their wifi. "Research shows that, for the business traveller, flexible, fast and reliable wifi access is a prerequisite when choosing a hotel," says Chris Bruce of BT Openzone.
Importantly for frequent travellers, wifi is increasingly also becoming relevant to telephone calls, and wifi phones, which route calls over the internet rather than via the traditional phone network, are booming.
Several manufacturers such as Belkin now provide wifi phones which, instead of connecting to a mobile phone network, simply log onto a wireless hotspot and send calls over the internet. Dozens of phones, including those running the hugely popular Skype software, are already available.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, hotels are the most common place to find hotspots worldwide, followed by restaurants and cafés. This is gradually changing, however. The City of London recently saw the unveiling of what is believed to be Europe's biggest wifi hotspot, covering the entire Square Mile. Run by The Cloud, it will allow the area's 350,000 workers to gain internet coverage via their laptop or mobile phone wherever they are.
"I've used the service myself in a taxi driving through the city, and I've managed to keep talking [using VOIP]," said Niall Murphy of The Cloud, which built the system in conjunction with the City of London. "This is the biggest hotspot of its kind in Europe as far as we know, and is unique as users keep their [internet] signal wherever they are."
There are currently around 2,000 conventional internet hotspots around London, covering almost all of the capital's major hotels, and hundreds of coffee shops. However, they require users to log on every time they are used. Users of the City system will simply have to log on to The Cloud once. "We've been meeting a lot of the big financial institutions in the area, and we've even found the network is available in their boardrooms, so we think there will be a corporate use for it as well," says Murphy.
Politicians have also backed the plan. Derek Wyatt, head of the UK's All Party Internet Group, says: "Such a large-scale project is an exciting prospect for communications in the UK, allowing people to send emails, make cheap phone calls, surf the Internet, do business and even play games online, wherever they are."
Unsurprisingly, hotspots have also sprung up in some odd places. The most "wholesome" hotspot location is St John's Church in Cardiff, where the Rev Keith Kimber installed wifi through BT Openzone to encourage laptop users to enter the church to work without noisy distractions.
Globally, the US has the highest number of hotspots (37,000), with the UK coming second (12,668) and South Korea third (9,415). Seoul is the city with the most hotspots, with London in third place. However, for the frequent traveller, one headache is that a lot of these systems use different log-ins, passwords, and payment systems. The answer could be the growing number of wifi aggregation services, such as Trustive (which includes The Cloud).
Another aggregator, iPass, also has a good network of 3G access points. From a corporate point of view, the unified bills the aggregators produce make life a lot easier. "It's got to the point where people often choose where to stay or meet based on whether they can get reliable wifi access. Branded venues such as Marriott hotels and Starbucks cafés are proving popular with iPass customers because they know they can get connected," says Doug Loewe of iPass.
One issue for wifi has been cost, and the hotel market recently come under fire for its pricing, with the Good Hotel Guide finding charges of £5 per hour in some hotels. Ian Fogg, of JupiterResearch, suggested clearer pricing guides were key to ensuring travellers were not ripped off. "It is not sufficiently clear when booking a hotel what type of broadband is available, what price it is – they normally just say 'Internet available'," he said.
From a hotel owner's point of view, by far the most popular option is to simply outsource wifi, and all the associated billing, security and systems. Older buildings in particular can prove tricky to cover, and you may find only parts of rooms have wireless coverage, for example. This requires the installation of wireless extender points, the location of which is absolutely key.
Conferences also pose a particular problem, as suddenly the system is swamped with users, which can sometimes make it sluggish. Again, many hotels turn to outsourcing to deal with the problem. For some corporate users, security risks also make wifi a less than ideal solution, so it is worth keeping in mind some people will still want a traditional wired connection.
The emergence of big players and aggregators may ultimately lead to a market shake-up. And if hotels simply outsource their networks, it could lead to business travellers getting a fairer deal.
Mark Prigg is the Science and Technology Correspondent at the London Evening Standard
