iPass and Swisscom Eurospot do Wi-Fi deal

iPass and Swisscom Eurospot have signed a network aggregation agreement that will mean around 1,500 European public wireless LAN hotspots will become part of the iPass virtual network.

The deal covers 10 countries and means the hotspots will have been rubber stamped by iPass as 'Enterprise Ready'. They will have to be proven to be of a certain quality and able to interoperate with commonly used VPNs, firewalls and policy management systems.

No financial details were disclosed.

Swisscom Eurospot's pan-European Wi-Fi network is formidable, covering well-known airports, train stations, hotel chains such as Hilton, Holiday Inn and Movenpick, and other locations, but it suffers - like most Wi-Fi plays - from not seamlessly working alongside other operators', offering a single bill, standard set-up and so on.

Services such as iPass' take away such uncertainty for business customers and are expected to become increasingly popular.

The Radicati Group has forecast Wi-Fi hotspots worldwide will increase by over 600 per cent to around 477,000 in 2007, from some 71,500 today. At that stage Europe will also have taken over from North America as the largest market.

However, most analysts admit standalone Wi-Fi profits will be hard for many providers to come by and the market will remain a fraction of the size of that for voice and data over cellular communications networks.

The countries covered by the iPass-Swisscom Eurospot agreement are Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and the UK.