C-Spire Picks Devicespace for Wi-Fi Reach

The operator, which has about 900,000 customers in the southern states, will plug into the company’s Curated Virtual Network (CVN) of 12 million Wi-Fi hotspots. San Bruno, Calif.-based Devicescape said in May that it now serves up 1.5 billion connections a month. (See Devicescape Handles 1.5B Wi-Fi Connections Monthly.)

It works like this: Devicescape has combined a global network of “amenity” hotspots — free Wi-Fi that restaurants, bars and other private retail locations have put up for their customers — with an app that lets carriers access those connections. The app sits on a user’s device and picks the strongest and best connection — be it cellular or Wi-Fi — available at that time.

This is appealing, particularly for smaller carriers in the U.S., since they get a larger addressable footprint of connections with the CVN network and easy Wi-Fi offload. Devicescape already has deals in the U.S. with the likes of MetroPCS and the somewhat mysterious and super-cheap “Wi-Fi first” provider Republic Wireless. (See Startup Taps Devicescape for Wi-Fi-First Network.)

— Dan Jones, Site Editor, Light Reading Mobile