Most Consumers Would Consider a Wi-Fi-First Mobile Service, "If"

Fully 66 percent of consumers surveyed across the globe, and a whopping 77 percent of U.S. and Canadian consumers, would consider replacing their current mobile plan with a Wi-Fi-first offering, if quality of experience were equivalent, a study conducted for Amdocs by Linx-IE Market Research Corp. has found.

"Only 10 percent of North Americans said never," said Uri Gurevitz, Amdocs director of market insight and strategy. The study surveyed 4,000 "digital consumers" in 11 nations around the world, including the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Brazil, Russia and Singapore.

U.S. and Canadian respondents said they'd consider making a switch if the Wi-Fi service offered the same access and coverage as their existing mobile Internet plan.

"Definitely pricing is important," Gurevitz said. "But network quality is more important. Price becomes a very distant third, fourth or fifth."

Those results show both the potential, and constraints, of a Wi-Fi-first mobile access strategy. “Same coverage and same access” are key qualifying clauses.

Wi-Fi coverage has to be both integrated with mobile coverage, and seamless. That means any Wi-Fi-first provider has to have a mobile virtual network operator agreement, at the very least, and ownership of a national network, at best.

In all cases, seamless handoff would be required to provide a fully-comparable experience to a mobile network access approach.

Cable TV operator carrier-grade Wi-Fi hotspots will grow from 14 percent today to 72 percent of overall Wi-Fi hotspots by 2018, research commissioned by Amdocs has found.

As part of their Wi-Fi network strategy to enable Wi-Fi coverage on the move, by 2016, 77 percent of cable TV operators surveyed plan to use "homespots" (where the user agrees to leave the hotspot open for use by passers-by), growing from 30 percent today.

Almost all operators (85 percent) plan to invest in carrier-grade Wi-Fi by 2016. Cable operators see carrier-grade Wi-Fi providing better positioning in mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) deals, supporting quad-play offerings and wireless services, while MNOs plan to use carrier-grade Wi-Fi broaden their networks and offload radio access network (RAN) traffic

By the end of 2016, 61 percent of cable operator Wi-Fi hotspots, and 70 percent of hotspots sourced by all access service providers. will be sourced from third parties.