Reflecting back on the past months, we are extremely pleased to see that the WBA Wi-Fi Global Congress in London – again – has proven to be the largest and best attended Wi-Fi event in the industry. With over 470 delegates attending, a great line-up of speakers provided great insights and thought-provoking presentations on a large range of topics, ranging from market forecasts and business models to case studies and deployment strategies. As Wi-Fi roaming was a key theme of the congress, the Wi-Fi roamfest received a huge interest from operator delegates as a fast track method to develop roaming agreements.

The industry has recently seen an unprecedented growth in Carrier Wi-Fi. This is reflected in the excellent momentum that WBA has been enjoying. As we celebrate the 10th year anniversary of WBA, the new additions from across the ecosystem has taken our collective strength to the 100 membership mark. We are also pleased to announce that Arqiva has joined the Board of Directors of the WBA as a EMEA representative and NTT DOCOMO were re-appointed as Asian representative.

As Carrier Wi-Fi continues to be one the main focal points of the industry, we have agreed to initiate a new programme to capture user, operator and functional requirements in order to help develop a common industry-wide definition for Carrier Wi-Fi. We will also continue to advance and expand our Interoperability Compliance Programme (ICP) and are also looking to launch a new Device Compliancy Testing programme. For these and other WBA programmes, we encourage our members to participate in these exciting developments.

The WBA will continue to progress our partnerships with GSMA, Wi-Fi Alliance, Small Cell Forum and CableLabs as more new work items unfold.

Moving forward, preparations for our next WBA membership working sessions and Board of Directors meeting in Atlanta, U.S.A (September 10th -12th) as well as our next Wi-Fi Global Congress in Beijing, China (November 18th – 21st) have started.

An important part of our Wi-Fi Global Congress are the 2013 WBA Wi-Fi Industry Awards. The Awards are now open for submissions, and we are looking forward to receiving your entries.

Yours truly,
Shrikant Shenwai