If your handset had a client on it that automatically selected the best available WiFi hotspot for you – would that be useful? What about if you could use the software to ask the service where your nearest open, free hotspot was?
With a growing number of WiFi enabled handsets in the market, and a growing number of data intensive applications hitting mobile, there will be a growing interest, from both operators and users, in servicing these data intensive applications off-net.
“With flat rate data tariffs, mobile operators will be happy to see data intensive applications go off network, onto somebody else’s network,” Alexander Zaidelson, product manager for mobile, WeFi, said.
WeFi is looking for partnerships with developer, handset manufacturers and application providers themselves, to widen the scope of its application.
“The ideal would be a plug-in to the application itself,” Zaidelson said. At the moment, WeFi works with Nokia, but iPhone and Windows Mobile compatibility will b e added soon, he said. One developer partner working with WeFi is Gypsii.
“I used to work with a video sharing provider, so I know that companies like that are very worried about not creating an unwanted billing event for their users,” he said. “Our service, plugged into applications like this, provides a way to give that reassurance.”
The client works by accessing a global database of hotspots, and selecting the best one for you, based on availability, protection, and bandwidth. As users use the client, they automatically add more hotspots to WeFi’s database. At the moment, the client just looks for free, open hotspots, and attaches you to that network. But it logs all the locked hotspots as well. At the moment, WeFi has over eight million spots listed in its database, up from just one million in April 2008. In the near future WeFi will build in registration details for customers that have specific accounts with Hotspot providers, Zaidelson said, so that users will not just be relying on the availability of open hotspots.
"Soon we will have tens of millions of hotspots listed," he said. "And even knowing where the locked ones are has value."