Posted on February 21, 2014

Devicescape is excited to showcase it’s engagement services at Mobile World Congress 2014. Accessed through any of the over 20 million hotspots that make up Devicescape’s CVN, Popwifi aims to better connect individuals with the places they frequent most and gives them the ability to share what they love about a particular place with anyone else in their community. Through Popwifi, end-users can automatically and seamlessly connect to the best nearby wifi network to surf the web as they please while also get the ability to rate and review these businesses. To learn more about Popwifi’s benefits to both venue’s and end-users, visit the Popwifi Venue Experience Manager and Popwifi Customer Experience sections of our website. If you can’t make it to our booth at MWC, and you want to see all this in action, please view our brand new video below:  

Amenity Wi-Fi Goes Mainstream

Posted on November 6, 2013

Recently I had the chance to talk to Light Reading’s Dan Jones about the changes taking place in amenity Wi-Fi. Dan had written previously about the Facebook/Cisco collaboration to offer stores a solution for free Wi-Fi, whereby consumers “sign in” with their Facebook credentials. He’d also written an interesting article after our conversation (which you can read here), so I thought I would expand on it with our perspective on wider market dynamics. Wi-Fi is one of the most important communications enablers we’ve ever experienced. In fact, with more than half of the traffic on our smartphones and tablets being carried by Wi-Fi, it’s arguably the dominant means of service access in use today. Despite Devicescape’s passion for Wi-Fi, our belief is that the combination of cellular and Wi-Fi is the most powerful—and required—way to deliver the experiences that users demand. (Read more of our opinions in the Always Best Connected post.) Wi-Fi has moved out of our homes and offices into the public arena in a big way. Amenity Wi-Fi, which we define as the shared Wi-Fi intended for guests and customers of businesses and public spaces, is a massive force and becoming more recognized as a mega-trend. Our…

Amenity Wi-Fi in Latin America

Posted on November 5, 2013

As in other regions of the world, cellular operators across Latin America are investigating ways in which curated amenity Wi-Fi can help them better meet the capacity needs of their networks while improving their subscribers’ overall mobile data experience. And there are very good reasons for them to be doing so. Here are just a few: Smartphone adoption is increasing dramatically across the region. For 1Q13, IDC reported a 53% uptick in Latin American smartphone sales over 1Q12. (And just last week IDC forecast a record fourth quarter across the world with smartphone sales likely to hit 1 billion units by the end of the year.) With smartphones in hand, user habits are changing, and more and more people are accessing more and more online content. (Our studies comparing 3G and 4G data usage show that when users convert to next-generation networks their overall usage—both cellular and Wi-Fi—increases.) In a 2012 Cisco study of wireless users in Mexico, they determined that mobile usage for wireless subscribers will see a 23X increase between 2011 and 2016. In the same study, they found that smartphone users access the Internet for data services 40% of the time and that 80% of respondents reported…

Devicescape releases the Q3 2011 Wi-Fi Report

Posted on November 22, 2011

Chalk it up as another banner quarter for Devicescape.  On the heels of growing to over 4 million hotspots globally, Devicescape just released its Q3 2011 Wi-Fi report.  What’s interesting about this quarter’s report is that I’m seeing some wavering in service provider loyalty.  Being a long-time Verizon Wireless subscriber myself, I assumed that most people were like me and would be resistant to carrier switching.  Unless of course it’s a hardware matter such as getting an iPhone but that has become irrelevant since Verizon now carries that smartphone. Data capping has become more and more of a subscriber concern over the last year with major carriers announcing intentions to get rid of unlimited data plans.  Although the reality is that most people don’t come close to the proposed plan caps, the idea of taking away consumer value from their plans is perceived as a hit to the consumer experience.  In the Devicescape report, 88% of respondents said that unlimited data plan offers would sway purchasing decisions.  If the mobile operators want to avoid carrier switching, they better come up with some solutions and educate their subscribers.  Data usage is only going to increase over time as rich content such…

Support for Blackberry

Posted on June 10, 2011

We’re happy to announce that we’ve added support for Blackberry devices.  Easy WiFi is now available on App World.  Hurrah! This version of Easy WiFi is focused more tightly on the cellular offload problem.  It allows users to automatically connect to the Easy WiFi Network or any other WiFi providers they might use, but it drops the map and certain other niceties.  It’s just amazing how rapidly the mobile world is evolving and how the platform lineup has shifted so dramatically over the last few years. When we started it was all about Windows Mobile, Windows PC, and Symbian. Then Symbian started to mean “Nokia”. Then iPhone appeared and we saw the ascension of the smartphone but WinMo apparently was in the bathroom while everyone was getting ready to go out to the party.  It quickly became iOS, Blackberry and Windows PC and we have to invite Symbian along. Windows PC goes to the gym and tries to lose some pounds with Atom. Suddenly Android hits and the lineup is iOS, Blackberry, Android.  Symbian fell off a cliff, and although the PC is still huge the playing field has changed and the Netbook doesn’t allow you entry into the new…

Easy WiFi selected for iRiver's eBook Readers

Posted on April 29, 2010

iRiver announced today that they are using Easy WiFi to provide global hotspot connectivity for their eBook readers!  The announcement showed the iRiver Story as a first recipient. Of course eReaders are just one category of emerging WiFi devices, but a good one for Easy WiFi.  The devices typically don’t include web browsers and need to be simple for all types of people to use.  Manually logging into public networks is so incredibly painful it’s doubtful users would really subject themselves to it. Easy WiFi gives iRiver’s users the capability to choose the WiFi providers they want, and be logged in automatically.  And, since Easy WiFi supports thousands of providers all over the world, iRiver get a single solution for a global market.