The deal between Germany’s Deutsche Telekom and crowdsourced Wi-Fi hotspot provider FON shows that the telecoms giant is firmly hedging its bets on a Wi-Fi offload strategy, according to zdnet.com.
Last month, Deutsche Telekom announced that it would partner with FON, with the aim of providing 2.5 million hotspots by 2016.
FON’s global network of hotspots is created by users who have agreed to share a portion of their home broadband, allowing other FON users to use their bandwidth when in the area.
British Telecom in the UK has a similar deal with FON, allowing BT customer to access the FON network.
Deutsche Telekom CEO Rene Obermann, said: “The partnership with FON sits perfectly with Telekom’s network expansion strategy. Wi-Fi and hotspots can be used to divert heavy data traffic to fixed-line networks and thus reduce the load on mobile networks.”
Deutsche Telekom’s Wi-Fi offload strategy is in keeping with many of the big telcos, many of which are rapidly rolling out hybrid networks of macro cells, small cells and Wi-Fi networks.
Businesswire.com reported that Boingo have also struck up a similar deal in the United States. Meanwhile, Britain’s O2 has partnered with BT, who have re-entered the telco race. The partnership could also see O2 expand its Wi-Fi hotspot capabilities.
