A new study into Wi-Fi offload predicts major uptake across all regions by 2017.
The report from analyst house igr-inc.com says that while the majority of Wi-Fi offload is currently consumer-driven, in that the end-user logs on to increase speed or reliability, technological shifts will cause a major uptake of carrier-driven offloading. This involves the carrier actively switching mobile data traffic over to local Wi-Fi networks.
The press release from iGR said that there was hardly a single carrier in the world that was not experimenting with Wi-Fi in some form or another.
However, it went on to say that regional differences were significant, with America and parts of Asia leading the way and the Middle East and Africa still in early stages of development.
“The reasons behind regional differences in Wi-Fi deployments are as much due to differences in GDP, regulation and taxation, as they are to availability of spectrum, affordability of devices relative to median income, literacy levels, population and population densities,” said the press the release.
According to marketwired.com, the report looks at six different regions: North America, Europe, Latin America, Middle East and Africa, Asia-Pacific, and Japan; and provides predictions for three different types of traffic: Wi-Fi only, user-driven Wi-Fi offload and carrier-driven Wi-Fi offload.
