UK WiFi Deconstructs Itself Further

A few weeks ago I wrote about the prospects for public WiFi in the UK market (here).  Its seems that in the face of adversity the players in the market have done something about it.  But was it a) collaborate to create on a proposition to beat 3G; or b) fracture the market further and weaken the proposition?

Well yes you guessed it they chose the latter - genius!!!

The UK has very few players in the WiFi market these days.  The two front runners are The Cloud and BT Openzone.  Which is great because they are allies and therefore present to customers a unified network footprint.  Coming in close behind them is T-Mobile.  Other than that Swisscom, Orange, Spectrum, Boingo are all in the market - but not in a substantial way.

So whilst the UK is the most competitive telecoms market in the world, there are few companies in the WiFi game, and they are working together so they should stand half a chance of presenting the customer a unified proposition.

Lets recap on the general market (this will be short).  3G data access is eating the lunch of the WiFi operators (no matter how much they deny it).  Their business traveller market is fast disappearing and its starting to heavily erode the new consumer market as well. If you want a long analysis read my reviousblog on the subject.

So what has happened to make this situation worse?  On Friday The Register reported that BT Openzone customers were being informed that as of Thursday this week they could no longer access The Cloud footprint.

Lets assume for sake of argument that it was equally both their faults - one wanted too much money and the other didn't want to pay enough.  However it happened its just decreased the likelyhood of public WiFi playing a significant role in the UK market.

Its true that users may notice very little difference in their coverage.  But BT you have just signalled to users that they cant get unified access to WiFi through the UK's biggest operator - that makes 3G so much more attractive to them, especially when 3G is cheaper and everywhere.  Cloud you have just lost your biggest visible partner to market and positioned yourself as tough to do business with.  Thats not a step forward.

The biggest problem for public WiFi is it isn't everywhere and 3G is. It just is not as convenient.  This latest event just magnifies that.  And its not as if WiFi is cheaper  - it isn't, its now significantly more expensive than cellular.  It doesn't offer massively better bandwidth in real world implementations either.

Retail public WiFi in the UK is heading south rapdily with this latest announcement.  WiFi will continue to make a significant contribution as a bundled part of a cellular tariff IF the operators can offer the MNO pricing that makes it cheaper to transit than their own network.

But unless a very different approach is taken, really fast, WiFi will not exist in a retail market for long.