Is Ubiquitous Mobile "There Yet"?

iPass' Mobile Broadband Index Says We're Getting There
If you've ever taken your family on a road trip, you've undoubtedly heard the familiar refrain from your kids in the back seat: Are we there yet? And if you're a frequent business traveler you're eager to get there too—"there" being anywhere you can find a Wi-Fi or mobile broadband hotspot so you can get your work done.

At iPass, we won't be satisfied until "there" is virtually everywhere. And according to our latest Mobile Broadband Index, we may not quite be there yet, but we're getting closer every year. Consider the following facts and figures from our 1H 2007 to 1H 2008 Mobile Broadband Index.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles—Not to Mention Boats
If you travel by airplane, you're undoubtedly among the many mobile users who have made airports the number one inter-city travel venue for wireless access. Forty percent of sessions overall take place in airports, with a year-over-year growth of 28 percent.

If you travel by train, you may be contributing to the 79 percent growth in mobile access at train stations and other commuter transit locations. And even if you travel by boat, you can have mobile access. In fact, the Washington State Ferry System serving the Seattle area ranked third in the world for transit-system access—behind only the London city train system and the Japan Rail train network, and ahead of the popular Heathrow Express trains that connect London with the airport.

If you travel by car, taxi or on foot, you're no longer limited to Internet cafés and Wi-Fi-ready restaurants such as McDonald's. Increasingly, hotspots are available in public venues such as business parks and city centers. And increasingly, people are using them. Access at public venues more than tripled in the past year, with average session lengths of nearly three hours as people opt for these new-age "offices."

Here, There and Everywhere
That pretty much covers the major modes of travel. How about the places where people connect wirelessly?

For the first time, European business use of Wi-Fi outpaced North America. In fact, business Wi-Fi usage in Europe grew 89 percent over the past year, and now accounts for 47 percent of the global total. Wi-Fi use in Asia grew by 54 percent, and the cities of Singapore and Tokyo now rank behind only London in business use of Wi-Fi. Use in Latin America, while it still represents only a small fraction of the global total, nearly doubled—a sign of the emergence of mobility south of the equator.

Traveling Beyond the Hotspot
In addition to Wi-Fi, we began tracking our 2.5G and 3G mobile broadband usage in the last version of our Mobile Broadband Index. Since then, we've found that this segment has grown significantly, thanks largely to the increasing availability of mobile data coverage—especially broadband-like 3G. For instance, in Q1 2007, only 35 percent of mobile broadband users in the US were able to rely solely on 3G technology during a given month, with the rest having to fall back on much slower 2.5G technology at least some of the time. By Q2 2008, the number of 3G-only users had growth substantially to 53 percent. And per-user utilization of mobile broadband grew by 59 percent, reaching an average of 211 MB per month.

There's no longer any doubt that 3G is rapidly progressing to the mainstream, and the emergence of even faster 4G technologies like Wi-MAX and LTE should continue this trend toward a seamlessly and ubiquitously connected mobile world.

Are We There? At iPass, We've Always Been There
The latest iPass Mobile Broadband Index tracks the tremendous growth in actual mobile usage worldwide. Part of that growth is due to increasing adoption of mobile technology by all kinds of users, in all kinds of places. But there's one basic driver behind the increased adoption, and that is simply the increased availability of Wi-Fi and mobile broadband in the settings and locations where businesspeople go.

We look at the iPass Mobile Broadband Index as one way of gauging our success in making those locations part of the Internet. Why don't you give it a look too, and see for yourself how we're doing to connect more people in more places? Simply visit www.ipass.com/mobileindex. We think you'll be surprised to see just how fast users around the world are joining the mobile revolution.

Read the full press release.