WLAN Unseats Dial-Up as Dominant Remote Connectivity Choice for Mobile Professionals

Strategy Analytics: the humble dial-up connection is well on its way to obsolescence as a remote access mode for roving US workers. Wireless LAN, on the other hand, is confirmed as the dominant connectivity choice for mobile professionals - strongly buoying the case for a broader array of multi-radio/ multi-mode handheld devices, leveraging WiFi's ubiquity. In 2006, for the first time, WiFi outranked dial-up as the number one mode of remote access, and did so by a healthy margin. An impressive 35 percent of US business users identify WLAN as their primary means of remote connectivity, whereas at 11 percent of respondents, dial-up is now on par with its speedier tethered counterpart, fixed broadband.

Mobility, Ownership & Usage, found that WLAN is not only present in most notebook PC's, but unlike past surveys is actually being used in the vast majority of cases. Four out of every five notebooks in the US has WiFi, with 88 percent of business professionals actively using this feature. Catalyzed by notebook penetration and the proliferation of WLAN infrastructure (especially sharp in the US), WLAN adoption for remote access now prevails.

WiFi really hit its stride this year, fueled by an explosion of residential WLAN gear, a steep ramp up of corporate installations, and the steady spread of paid and free hotspots in the US. Our latest US survey registers a surge in worker mobility, half of which is on-premises and a third of which is metro-area. WiFi is the obvious remote connectivity choice for the majority of mobile professionals, given its vital role in the home and office, robust platform support from Intel and Microsoft, and the freedom of doing away with wires. At present, the price premium associated with 3G card connectivity remains unpalatable to the average user. Not only do these survey results confirm the demise of dial-up, but they also underscore the rising importance of smaller handheld multi-radio WLAN/WWAN devices - namely mobile phones. Today it may be difficult to get two service providers to agree on the impact of mobile convergence, but the reality is that convergence will take many forms. Whether it's selling lower quality, discounted wireless VOIP, marketing hot new converged services, or purely saving with least-cost-routing of existing services, having a range of multi-radio designs is an imperative for both device OEMs and mobile operators.

Wireless Enterprise Strategies survey Publ 20061011