Boingo Wi-Fi hot spots to connect 40 million handsets
Wi-Fi and distributed antenna systems provider Boingo signed a deal with a “tier one” American carrier that includes shipment of 40 million handsets enabled with Wi-Fi offload onto Boingo’s network of hot spots.
Boingo apprised investors of the deal with the undisclosed carrier in a March 10 announcement.
From an end-user perspective, a customer with an enabled handset will automatically connect to a Boingo hot spot when the smartphone comes in range; the user won’t have to do anything to connect or authenticate.
Boingo operates small cells and DAS networks at airports, stadiums, universities and other large, crowded venues. The company said it connects more than 1 billion users each year.
“It is clear that with skyrocketing mobile data traffic on cellular networks, the need for carrier Wi-Fi offload has now arrived,” Boingo CEO David Hagain said in a statement. “This is a milestone we have been working toward for years, and we believe this agreement is just the first step in what’s to come. True, seamless Wi-Fi offload is here.”
The large-scale carrier deployment follows a smaller field trial with a smaller number – still in the millions – of handsets.
The carrier deal also covers Wi-Fi authentication and offload for Passpoint-certified devices. The Passpoint WPA2 network features enterprise-grade encryption.
Back in June, Boingo partnered with Time Warner Cable in a similar deal that allows Time Warner customers to access Boingo’s Wi-Fi hot spot network.
Similarly, Boingo customers can access Time Warner’s network of 35,000 hot spots.
