* What networks should employees use when they roam?
As the telecom and PC disciplines continue to collide in converged smartphones, remote access service company iPass has added BlackBerry Wi-Fi connectivity to its list of supported access devices and methods.
Enterprises increasingly need to consider access for handhelds, in addition to laptops, as users travel. iPass has long offered worldwide remote access connectivity to enterprise work forces with laptops by way of a single client application called iPassConnect. The application allows users with corporate credentials to connect to the Internet and to their corporate WANs around the world using the access networks that are available wherever they happen to be.
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All current and future BlackBerry models have now joined iPass’ list of supported handhelds, which currently includes the Apple iPhone, Nokia Symbian-based devices and Microsoft Windows Mobile.
“We now cover 80% of [handheld] devices,” says Steven Wastie, iPass senior vice president of marketing and strategy.
The company pushes Wi-Fi usage in the 140,000 hot spots it covers for the extra bandwidth and the avoidance of WAN data usage charges. The company does also provide WAN mobile data coverage in nine countries across the United States (EV-DO), in Europe (HSDPA) and in Asia (HSDPA and EV-DO in Japan; 1xRTT in China; and HSDPA in Hong Kong and Singapore).
An interesting question to ponder is, given the aggressive buildout of Wi-Fi and 3G/4G networks, what will be businesses’ mobile WAN strategies going forward?
It’s likely to be a mix of services, with Wi-Fi kicking in particularly for multinational corporations wanting a break from usage fees when employees are abroad. The holdup in getting 3G mobile data services more widely deployed from an aggregator such as iPass is the difficulty in providing flat-fee, per-month per-user pricing.
Having to account for roaming, settlement and long-distance charges that are dependent on where and when users cross borders makes it difficult to offer predictable pricing to enterprises, Wastie says.
That problem, however, becomes moot with Wi-Fi hot spots.
