June 13, 2005

T-Mobile USA offers some insight into the usage patterns of its Wi-Fi customers as well as several Wi-Fi roaming agreements, which the company said would triple the number of hot spots available to its customers to more than 25,000 locations worldwide.

T-Mobile USA said it has served more than 450,000 unique paying customers across its Wi-Fi network during the past 90 days. The carrier added that those customers typically spend 64 minutes online per session compared with 45 minutes last year and 23 minutes in 2003.

Joe Sims, T-Mobile HotSpot vice president and general manager, added that network volume increased from more than 10 terabytes of data transmission last December to 17.5 terabytes in May.

T-Mobile USA offers access to its Wi-Fi network on a pay-as-you-go, per-day, monthly or yearly subscriber model as well as an add-on to its traditional voice calling plans.

The new roaming partners include iBAHN, which was formerly known as STSN, Concourse Communications Group, Opti-Fi, and members of the Wireless Broadband Alliance.

The iBAHN deal provides T-Mobile HotSpot customers with access to more than 100,000 hotel rooms across more than 525 hotels, including Marriott, Hilton, Ritz-Carlton, Doubletree and Renaissance properties. The Concourse and Opti-Fi agreements cover 39 airports, including Chicago O'Hare, JFK, LaGuardia, Newark and Minneapolis-St. Paul, and expand T-Mobile's Wi-Fi coverage to 72 airports.

T-Mobile USA noted that the bi-lateral WBA roaming agreements include more than 9,300 international Wi-Fi locations operated by Orange France, Swisscom Mobile, Portugal Telecom and ePLDT in the Philippines.

Source: RCR News