Boingo Wireless’ Wi-Fi offering received a boost in Japan as the company has expanded its current relationship with the country’s largest wireless operator. That expansion now includes Wi-Fi roaming and data offload services for NTT DoCoMo.
Boingo noted that the agreement will provide DoCoMo customers with access to its more than 600,000 Wi-Fi hotspots around the world that are part of its roaming offering. Through a separate agreement, Boingo customers will also have access to DoCoMo’s approximately 55,000 hotspots in Japan, increasing Boingo’s footprint in the country to more than 60,000 hotspots.
DoCoMo has been aggressive of late in moves to divert user traffic off of its cellular network and onto small cell solutions. The carrier last month rolled out a femtocell capable of supporting 3G and LTE services simultaneously, and has been offering 3G-enabled femtocells since 2007.
Analysts have noted that carriers are increasingly looking towards integrating Wi-Fi offload capabilities into their networks as a way to handle the growing demand for mobile data services.
“With public deployments set to start in earnest, the next major stage in small-cell evolution surrounds the effective incorporation of Wi-Fi,” explained Dimitris Mavrakis, principal analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media, as part of a report the research firm released on the growth in small cell adoption. “Although this technology is being added to new models, there is work to be done to ensure that traffic is managed across all radio types intelligently. We’re seeing this work start in the Small Cell Forum and [Wireless Broadband Alliance] – the fact that Cisco is now building small cells incorporating Wi-Fi can only help this movement.”
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