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 Boingo Wants to Talk By Eric Griffith
April 5, 2006
Voice over Wi-Fi at a hotspot probably isn't that big a deal. But hotspots supporting the future phones combining cellular and Wi-Fi in one? They're a must. And Boingo Wireless said this week it's working on it. Boingo has partnered with Kineto Wireless, one of the developers of Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) and maker of a UMA-based software client for use on handsets supporting fixed/mobile convergence (F/MC). Initial plans are for support of UMA on Windows Mobile 5-based devices accessing the Boingo Roaming System. Steve Shaw, Director of Marketing at Kineto, says seamless roaming from cellular to Wi-Fi and back isn't the hard part. "There's a business reality, that Boingo needs to have a relationship with the [cellular] provider with the UMA service, so they can bill and charge users," he says. So until those deals are in place, don't expect instant F/MC-style roaming even if the phones arrive soon. "Providing the technology is the first step," Shaw says. Luckily, the handsets may be just around the corner. Boingo is doing demonstrations at the CTIA Wireless 2006 show this week with Kyocera Wireless prototype phones that support dual-mode CDMA and Wi-Fi. The phone runs a BREW-based operating system. Kineto earlier this week announced a partnership with Texas Instruments to make sure its UMA software works with TI's WiLink and OMAP-Vox platforms for handsets. TI is making chips for phones that could very well include Wi-Fi with cellular, Bluetooth and even FM radios. With over 30,000 venues in its virtual network, Boingo Wireless is one of the largest Wi-Fi hotspot aggregators around, and almost certainly the biggest one that's open to anyone willing to pony up $22 a month (services like iPass, with a bigger footprint — almost 50,000 — are reserved only for corporate customers). That's a lot of locations ripe for use with phones, and of course Boingo would love to have the talkers as customers rather than lose them to services like Skype and a plethora of others (who can use the VoIP on a laptop that's already paid up for using the hotspot). Boingo and Kyocera are both members of Mobile Integrated Go-to-Market Network IP Telephony Experience (MobileIGNITE), an industry consortium pushing F/MC.
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