Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Europe's Wi-Fi wars heat up

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 22:32:15 -0500

Europe's Wi-Fi wars heat up

As we have reported lately, the growing recognition of the business potential of Wi-Fi
in Europe is leading to ever more intense battles for market share and revenues. In
the latest move, Swisscom last week announced it was acquiring both British
Megabeam and German WLAN AG. The move made Swisscom Eurospot the
second largest European 802.11 network after Telia Homerun, with which Swisscom
has signed a roaming agreement.

Scott Rafer  http://lists.fiercemarkets.com/c.html?s=69l,1yqf,8mf,lvx3,1ml1,lp64,96ow
reports that, as of today, Swisscom Eurospot operates 206 Wi-Fi
hotspots, making it the largest network in Germany and Switzerland. In the U.K.,
Swisscom is third, behind BT Openzone and Surf and Sip. In the Netherlands, it is a
close second after Hubhop. BT Openzone has announced that it would have 400
hotspots in the U.K. by this summer, and that it was planning 1,300 hot spot
partnerships with Inspired Broadcast Networks in the U.K. In the Netherlands, the
new HP Wireless Campaign will increase hotspot competition in this region.

Swisscom intends to head off T-Mobile's attempt to dominate European Wi-Fi.
T-Mobile's 2,200 U.S. hot spots shows it is likely to be as aggressive trying to gain
market share in Europe. The interesting thing is that T-Mobile’s main European
markets are the U.K., Germany, and the Netherlands, the same countries where
Swisscom just invested. T-Mobile's only other Western European market is Austria,
where the company has a partnership agreement with Metronet, the leading Austrian
Wi-Fi network. In addition to T-Mobile and Swisscom, both Orange and Vodafone
are active in these same European countries. France Telecom's Orange has a Wi-Fi
strategy, and it owns both Mobilcom (a German 3G license holder) and Orange
Switzerland, so Orange is clearly competing with Swisscom Eurospot. Vodafone has
not yet announced any Wi-Fi plan, but it is already partnering with Swisscom's
Debitel on Vodafone's German 3G network, which means that it is reasonable to
assume that a Swisscom-Vodafone Wi-Fi partnership is in the offing.

Rafer writes that European carriers and other WISPs have announced that by 2005
they would increase the number of hot spots from the current 2,000 to 100,000. The
WISPs are also making plans to stop doing their own hot spot deployment and shift
the capital burden to partners for the additional half-million hot spots that Europe will
need by 2007. “Whether or not Vodafone officially joins the fray before Wi-Fi-GPRS
devices are introduced at the end of 2003, Swisscom, T-Mobile, and Telia Homerun
are setting a pace that will finally make European business buyers take Wi-Fi
seriously,” Rafer concludes. (On Swisscom and European Wi-Fi, see also Alan Reiter's
http://lists.fiercemarkets.com/c.html?s=69l,1yqf,8mf,axoh,8of6,lp64,96ow
pointed analysis of their pricing structure -- he describes it as at "ridiculous
pricing").

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