Increasing number of public WLAN hotspots in Western Europe - but for which services?


Stuttgart, Germany - 8th June, 2004 - During the past year and a half the number of public WLAN hotspots has significantly increased in practically all European countries. Hotspots statistics show that at the end of 2003 there were most commercially active public hotspots in France (nearly 2 000). There has been a tremendous increase in the number of hotspots in France ever since the regulation opened for public WLAN in mid-2003. Germany (1 100 public hotspots) and the UK (1 000 public hotspots) are the next two largest markets. As far as services providers are concerned, Swisscom Eurospot and Telia HomeRun are the two largest providers with 2 000 and 2 500 public hotspots respectively in Europe.

However, at this point in time, public WLAN is still mainly used for brief e-mail and Internet/Intranet access by the economically interesting but restricted user group of business travellers and nomadic workers. New and higher revenue generating applications or applications addressing a larger customer group have still to be found. Consequently, despite high growth rates, the public WLAN service segment will remain a niche market in the mid term. For instance we expect that the one billion euros revenue line in Germany, will not be reached before 2007 or 2008, this would then represent not more than 5% of the overall mobile telephony market.

This market outlook comes from a recently published study by InfoCom on the present European Public WLAN actors and developments.


About InfoCom

InfoCom is a market research and consultancy company with over 15 years experience providing strategic planning assistance to stakeholders in the telecommunications and multimedia industry. InfoCom’s independent and fact-based perspective on the telecommunications and multimedia environment contributes to decision makers understanding of market dynamics, trends and opportunities in the key markets.