The Redwood Shores, California-based company made its name offering employees of its corporate customers WiFi access to the internet, and thus also to their intranet through a VPN client, from hotspots operated by its partners around the world. Usage is charged to their company’s account rather than requiring immediate settlement in local currency.
The total hotspots aggregated by the company stands at 78,000 in some 70 countries, and though it also offers fixed-line remote connectivity, it is clearly the wireless side that is most directly associated with its name.
However, corporate road warriors increasingly want access over a wireless WAN as well as wireless LAN, particularly now that EV-DO in the CDMA world and HSDPA in GSM operators means data rates are approaching those of entry-level DSL connections. However, since that entails licensed spectrum, it means signing up with mobile operators, who in turn must be prepared to share, to some degree, their subscribers with iPass, in mindshare terms at least.
The signs are, however, that iPass has been overcoming some initial resistance on that front. It already has both the two biggest CDMA operators in the US, i.e. Verizon and Sprint, and is working on expanding into Canada with one of the CDMA operators there. It also has four carriers in Asia, namely KDDI in Japan, Hutchison in Hong Kong, SingTel in Singapore and China Unicom in China.
Though its client could be used to connect laptops to a number of operators’ networks in Europe, until earlier this year it only provided the connection itself, with the billing still having to go through the operator, with roaming charges potentially going on an individual’s bill rather than their corporate account, and generally representing a more complex, separate payment route.
The mould was broken in February, however, when T-Mobile UK became the first European operator to accept a deal in which iPass provides connectivity and consolidates the usage billing with the rest of what it charges the corporate customer.
Now, according to Anurag Lal, a further deal is close to being announced in the Netherlands, though he declined to reveal the identity of the operator. Clearly, though, suspicion must fall initially on T-Mobile, in that it has already accepted the principle of an iPass-billed relationship.
Also due in the near future is an extension of the company’s mobile OS support on its client, which currently covers Windows Mobile 5 and the Symbian OS with Nokia’s Series 60 user interface.
Lal said a version for Symbian with the UIQ interface is due out in the very near future. UIQ is championed by a couple of manufacturers but primarily Sony Ericsson, which actually acquired the ISV that developed it earlier this year. Motorola also makes Symbian phones with this UI.
