Airports handle a staggering amount of travellers each year. London Heathrow saw over 70 million people pass through its gates in 2012. At Beijing International, the figure was closer to 82 million and Atlanta International Airport hosted nearly 96 million passengers.

These figures do not include friends, family, loves ones, the hundreds of thousands of staff members and all the other people who are entering and exiting airports on a daily basis.

Wi-Fi is essential

Airports are essentially self-contained cities and therefore connectivity is essential. Wi-Fi has become a critical part of airport infrastructure. It is estimated that business travellers account for up to two-thirds of airline revenues. For these travellers, time is money and if airports are anything, they are certainly time consuming. Increasingly, business travellers are being equipped with the tools necessary to maintain productivity even when on the move and so for them, Wi-Fi is a necessity.

Not only do business travellers demand internet access, but airport vendors, airlines and security personnel all need wireless connectivity too.

While Wi-Fi has become an essential component of airport infrastructure, the connectivity experience has left much to be desired. Coverage can be patchy, unpredictable and perhaps most importantly, inconvenient. The process of connecting to public networks has been historically convoluted for the end-user and consistently did not match expectations.

The next generation of Wi-Fi

Next Generation Hotspot (NGH), coupled with Passpoint certified devices are set to fundamentally change wireless connectivity in these high traffic areas. The new wireless protocol will allow mobile devices to seamlessly pass from the cellular network to the WLAN without any intervention from the user.

The mobile device is able to find the most appropriate network and then automatically authenticate via the device’s SIM card.

The infrastructure in these high-density locations must be able to meet a wide array of demands and previous generations of wireless standards have struggled to cope. The most recent iterations of wireless networks, however, provide a much more stable and secure platform.

This technology will redefine how mobiles devices connect to the internet, making the experience infinitely more straightforward for the end-user.

Wi-Fi roaming partnerships

The use of NGH is also likely to cut the costs of international roaming; something that would be welcome news for travellers. Wi-Fi providers will form partnerships outside of their host nation, allowing users to automatically connect to partner networks; again, without any human intervention. Such partnerships can already be seen beginning to emerge, such as the deal between Boingo Wireless and AT&T which allows AT&T users to access Boingo’s global network of airport hotspots.

Data offloading

Next Generation Hotspot will not only prove disruptive to traveller connectivity but to mobile service providers too. Airports and other large scale public areas can often be difficult places to deploy new hardware or improve coverage density.

With NGH, MSPs will be able to offload data traffic to the WLAN, freeing up network resources and allowing travellers to make full use of voice functionality on their devices.

This data offload strategy lies at the heart of the technology and is one of the many reasons that both hotspot providers and MSPs are pushing it forward. Mutually beneficial partnerships will be formed, resulting in savings for MSPs and generating revenue for hotspot service providers.

Cellular and Wi-Fi working together

For airports, Wi-Fi is not a luxury; but rather a necessity. While traditional Wi-Fi has proven to be of paramount importance to travellers, it has never fulfilled its potential as a straightforward alternative to the cellular network. Next Gen Wi-Fi will vastly improve the wireless experience of travellers in airports and rather than providing an alternative to the cellular network, it will fundamentally redefine the relationship between the cellular network and local wireless networks.

For the first time, cellular and Wi-Fi networks will be working together to provide the best possible experience to end-users.