Nokia is investing in a 26 site trial of free public WiFi hotspots in London. The company has funded the installation of 26 access points across central London, siting equipment in public telephone boxes owned by Spectrum Interactive, a UK WiFi service provider.
The trial is live from today, and will run until the end of December. Nokia will assess the results at that point, to see how it wants to progress. Any WiFi enabled device can log-on to the sites, as long as the user accepts the T’s& C’s on the landing page.
There were few commercial details available today, although with the trial limited to just 26 sites, there would be little requirement for anything other than straight sponsorship from Nokia. However, as the stated aim is to roll out many more spots, in other cities and countries, there will clearly need to be some revenue model behind a service expansion – with advertising the most likely candidate.
John Nichols, of Nokia, said that the company was exploring an ad-funded model. The two companies are working with a third company, Selective Media, to assess advertising monetisation models for free at the point of use WiFi sites. Nichols added that the company would be assessing what types of device attach to the sites, what data usage looks like, and making decisions based on that.
He added that the provision of free public WiFi is completely in line with Nokia’s overall strategy. The company plans to include the hotspot sites in its mapping products, so that Nokia Maps users can see where free WiFi hotspots exist.
Mobile operators are also exploring the rollout of public WiFi, with usage included as free with users' data packages, or similar. To support an automatic sign-on plus roaming use case, standards that allow SIM-based authentication of the user are being developed. Nokia's trial is of a more traditional sign-on nature, although once a user has been authenticated once, a device will automactically attach to any other Nokia hotspot SSIDs.
Simon Alberga, Chairman of Spectrum Interactive, said the sites would limit users to 1Mbps download and 0.5Mbps upload, with 20Mbps DSL lines serving each phone box. Spectrum Interactive owns 1800 payphone sites across London, Alberga said. The company uses Access Points and Controllers from HP, Alberga told Mobile Europe.