According to a new research report carried out by independent research company Berg Insight, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.5 percent, the installed base is forecasted to reach 15 million units by 2018. Making use of Wi-Fi in unlicensed spectrum is an increasingly attractive solution for mobile operators. Virtually all new smartphones now have Wi-Fi connectivity as standard and a majority of smartphone owners already use Wi-Fi at home and at work. The installed base of Wi-Fi enabled handsets is forecasted to grow from nearly 1.5 billion units at the end of 2012 to more than 4 billion units in 2018.The report has also found that a number of strategies regarding Wi-Fi network deployments are possible. Many mobile operators that own wireline network assets have already offered free Wi-Fi services to PC users for several years and now start to include Wi-Fi access for smartphone subscribers as well. Operators that currently lack their own Wi-Fi infrastructure can acquire capacity from existing Wi-Fi network operators and aggregators. Most Wi-Fi networks operate independent of mobile networks today. The network selection and authentication process is initiated by the user directly, or by the handset based on preconfigured preferences and credentials. The seamless handover between base stations and roaming between networks in different countries that are central to the services provided by mobile networks is usually not found in Wi-Fi networks. However, the industry is now working on the next generation of seamless carrier Wi-Fi integration.
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