Icomera reports 272 percent increase in Wi-Fi use on public transport
Icomera has just released interesting statistics on the use of Wi-Fi access in public transport (mostly in Europe). The company provides the Moovbox wireless access points to bus, ferry and train operators which provide Wi-Fi access to passengers and uses 3G, WiMAX or satellite backhaul.
- By the end of October 2008, over one million passengers had used Wi-Fi services in trains, buses and ferries, approximately 3.72 million times, a 272% increase over the past year. Among Icomera’s customers are large transport operators such as Arriva, First Group, National Express, Stagecoach and Go-Ahead.
- Average Wi-Fi session on trains: 83 minutes
- Average Wi-Fi session on buses: 30 minutes
- Average number of sessions per week: 50,000
Icomera says that one of the most popular on-board Wi-Fi services is the National Express East Coast (NXEC) intercity rail route from London King’s Cross to the Scottish Highlands via Edinburgh:
“NXEC has equipped 43 trains with free Wi-Fi hotspot service to all passengers, and has seen over 1.3 million sessions since December 2007, with an average online time of 70 minutes. The overall uptake of Wi-Fi across NXEC passengers is around 9%, with an estimated 85% of laptop-carrying passengers opting to use the free service at some point during their journey.”
“Since we switched from a pay-per-use service to free Wi-Fi we’ve seen a significant though not unexpected jump in usage,” said Rachel Dawson, sales and marketing director at National Express East Coast.
Why so different from iPass Wi-Fi stats?
I spoke to Jim Baker (founder of Moovera, now chief marketing officer of Icomera after the Moovera acquisition) about the success of Wi-Fi in public transport and how the Icomera data compare with recent statistics provided by iPass (http://www.ipass.com/pressroom/pressroom_wifi.html).
(1) Wi-Fi versus 3G: Jim says they’ve seen significant growth in the use of Wi-Fi on trains, buses and ferries, defying predictions by wireless industry analysts that 3G dongles will take the wind out of Wi-Fi’s sails. While business subscribers are indeed reaching for dongles in droves, they and many others who don’t have them still prefer to use free Wi-Fi if and when it’s available. I also think public transport users tend to be younger and therefore less likely to have expensive 3G data plans subsidized by employers.
(2) Icomera metrics look very different from the iPass Mobile Broadband Index, which was updated by iPass in late September:
http://www.ipass.com/pressroom/pressroom_wifi.html
A lot of the industry press picked up on the recent iPass Index update, so it got a lot of coverage. Interestingly, if you look at their figures they show 2.8 million sessions across all of their 100,000+ hotspots around the world in the first six months of 2008. That’s an average of 476,000 per month or 119,000 per week, with a 46% annual usage growth.
By contrast, Icomera is seeing 50,000 sessions per week on public transit alone, a little under half the entire global usage of iPass hotspots, and the same run rate as the world’s top three airports in the world combined. Wi-Fi usage growth rate is over 270% over the last year on the buses, trains and ferries outfitted by Icomera.
Jim believes that the figures demonstrate a strong market for in-vehicle Internet, and while the bi-annual iPass survey is useful to understand general trends, it’s important to appreciate that it does not take into account an awful lot of Wi-Fi hotspots out there, particularly ones in niche markets like public transport that have very high (and rapidly increasing) usage levels.
I will also add to Jim’s observation that iPass customers are almost all enterprise users because until very recently, the iPass service was not available to consumers.
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