The Overland Park, Kansas-based carrier is going international with Extended Workplace via an agreement with UK-based Quiconnect, a company that styles itself a virtual network enabler, which means it will cut the deals with network operators that will make Sprint’s unified-look remote-access service possible around the world.
Sprint has been in the WiFi connectivity business since 2000, when it began building a network of hotspots that currently comprises seven airports around the US, recalled Mark Brigman, business development manager for this activity at Sprint Business Solutions. We’ve also got roaming agreements in place with 14 carriers that give us a network of 13,000 hotspots, mainly in North America, he went on.
As of last year, however, the carrier has been moving to give its remote access service a single look and feel, enabling it to keep control not only of the billing relationship with the corporate customer, but also the user interface.
Thus in March it announced Extended Workplace, which involves the customer downloading a client to his or her laptop, or else go to the Extended Workplace website, from either of which access is then made via cdma2000 1x RTT, WiFi, dial-up, DSL, ISDN or CATV, regardless of which network the connection is actually going. Given that today’s announcement involves extension to the world outside North America, GPRS and UMTS are clearly going to be prerequisites of the offering, and Brigman said the company is about to announce something for the GSM world.
The kind of control of the customer relationship that Extended Workplace requires, argued Quiconnect CEO Troy Simoni, is more suited to a virtual network operator (VNO) scenario than to roaming agreements, where typically the person signing in will be faced with the log-in page of the roaming partner rather than that of the company fronting the service. In the US, where Sprint has roaming deals, it is now having to negotiate with its partners to support the client version of Extended Workplace.
Quiconnect plans to bring some 6,000 hotspots around the world to the Sprint offering within weeks, said Simoni. Brigman added that the target for the end of the year is 12,000 hotspots outside North America. Given the virtual network nature of the arrangement, support for both the client and clientless (i.e. Web) version of Extended Workplace will be automatic.
That will put Sprint into direct competition with iPass and GoRemote, and while an iPass spokesperson argued that Extended Workplace is aimed at SME, Simoni disagreed, saying it is squarely aimed at corporates. For now, iPass can boast GSM connectivity for its service, but that is only a matter of time for Sprint. One area iPass does claim differentiation, meanwhile is in security, arguing that iPass offers policy enforcement and management which goes further than integration with point solutions.
Simoni countered that the Sprint offering will be part of a broader portfolio including fixed telephony, backhaul, cellular (in the US) and WiFi, whereas when it comes right down to it, iPass is just offering remote access. Sprint will also look to VoIP-enable the service in a second phase, something Simoni argued would be more difficult for the likes of iPass, as it would have to renegotiate roaming agreemment for this purpose.
