2,700 hotspots and mobile phone payment for 20 million subscribers.
Excilan have this week announced the addition of another million subscribers to their Wi-Fi hotspot authentication system in Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia and the USA, bringing their total subscribers to nearly 20 million across 2,700 hotspots.
Excilan use a virtual SIM solution to authenticate its users, eliminating the need for dual SIMs, additional software, passwords or PIN codes. Users whose network has signed an agreement with Excilan can have access to the hotspots simply by bringing along their mobile phone, while payment is made to the phone provider. Excilan provide the payment platform, enabling carriers and users to utilize Wi-Fi hotspots with no setup delay.
Networks using the Excilan authentication method include O2 UK, Bouygues Telecom and SFR in France, Orange in Switzerland and Sunday in Hong Kong.
Excilan's growth matches a recent report which predicts that the global Wi-Fi revenues are to grow from the current $7 billion USD to $44 billion USD by 2008, with Wi-Fi to become a ubiquitous technology.
This also follows on from efforts last year to establish the WISP Association, which aims to offer an attractive level of global WLAN roaming for the end-user: sharing different operators' networks with secure authentication and simple administration.
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