Rikkie Helms, director for UK-based Vodafone’s mobile office team, said: We have taken the decision that we won’t be delivering wireless hotspots, but will support them using our billing capabilities using SMS messages that can bill to other accounts.
Wi-Fi hotspots are springing up in locations such as coffee shops, airports and railways stations, and, there will be more than 20 million hotspot users in Europe by 2006, generating about $3.36 billion (E3 billion).
Many of Vodafone’s rivals, such as Orange and T-Mobile, are actively engaged in developing Wi-Fi hotspots. However, Helms said: Companies such as T-Mobile that are typically traditional telcos and fixed-line operators will provide Wi-Fi hotspots. But we aim to focus on 3G services that we will launch in 2004, and the support for Wi-Fi.
Helms pointed out that Vodafone has only installed one Wi-Fi hotspot in Germany. Here the company has an ongoing relationship with Swisscom’s German arm, Debitel, [DBLG.DE] for 3G services. It had previously been thought that Vodafone would use this tie-up to piggyback the Swisscom Eurospot network as a means to gain Wi-Fi traction.
This article was based on material originally published by Computerwire
