WiFi growth strategies for telecoms by Fon CEO Alex Puregger

Fon, the World's Leading Carrier WiFi ProviderAlex Puregger, CEO at Fon, a carrier WiFi provider, revealed seven key points that will define the WiFi revolution in the coming years.

WiFi offloading will increase as mobile data traffic booms, fueled by video. Cisco, the US-based networking giant, expects a 7-fold increase in growth of mobile data traffic by 2021, and more than 60 percent of traffic will be offloaded this year via WiFi networks.

The number of hotspots will grow driven by carrier WiFi managed hotspots. This is a significant step forward for the convergence of cellular and WiFi. Today there are close to 100 million hotspots globally. Cisco expects WiFi hotspots to more than 500 million by 2021.
Carrier Wi-FiHost providers, mobile operators, and venue owners can benefit from cost savings and improve the efficiency by sharing infrastructure. WiFi also enables value-added services such as proximity marketing, indoor positioning, advertising, and analytics.

Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) will have an impact on the WiFi ecosystem. The separation of WiFi software from hardware functions, and provisioning from a centralized management plane will lead to many advantages, such as service agility, enabling quick commissioning and decommissioning of new services.

WiFi will be essential for IoT connectivity. According to the WBA, during the last year, more than 85 percent of companies have increased the priority level of IoT on their roadmap. WiFi will be the technology of choice for any higher bandwidth requirements for the success of IoT.

Home WiFi will define the WiFi revolution in coming years. Home WiFi is the battleground for the Connected Home. Many consumers are not satisfied with the quality of their WiFi connection at home. Internet service providers (ISPs) need to address the issues of home WiFi customers.

The broadband industry is also noticing the WiFi disruption by OTT players. Tech giants such as Google, Amazon, and Facebook are entering the WiFi space.

Fon has evolved its WiFi Service Management Solution, providing Communications Service Providers (CSPs) with the necessary functionality needed to deploy and manage WiFi services and unlock new business potential.

Fon assists telecom operators for WiFi Offload, WiFi Calling, and WiFi Monetization, and WiFi as a Service, with advanced guest WiFi functionalities.