Wireless network providers form association

LUXEMBOURG -- Five WLAN public access service providers and five WLAN vendors announced the establishment of the Pass-One, an association formed to boost the WLAN (wireless local area network) hot spot business and to promote one global service mark. A key success factor of the public WLAN hotspot industry will be to offer a network, substantially large enough to be attractive to the end-user, the founders said.

The operational WISPs (wireless Internet service providers) and GSM cellular carriers have decided to create a central entity that provides required standards and at the same time offers consolidated administrative services to all member WISPs. The new association says that the most cost-effective way of expanding the network of hotspots is for the WISPs to offer roaming with other WISP networks. This requires an industry agreement on service levels and on authentication technology, which are the main obstacles WISPs have to face when wanting to offer roaming.

"Seamless roaming is the key success driver to the expansion of wireless LAN as the easiest access to broadband communication," said Catherine Delrez, spokesperson for Pass-One. "The more 'natural' or 'second nature' it is for the end-user to access wireless broadband the more likely it will be a success for the mass market."

Based in Luxembourg

Pass-One is a non-profit association whose secretariat is based in Luxembourg. It brings over 20 years of roaming knowledge, both from the cellular and financial industry, and is founded upon the expertise of its management in these industries where roaming has been successfully established.

Pass-One's stated mission is to create one global end-user experience by implementing minimum service standards, certifying compliancy of its members' networks and promoting WISPs as premium global wireless broadband providers. The association will certify its members by providing a single global service mark. Similar to the credit card industry, WISP members will be able to use the Pass-One global service mark as recognition tool for the end-users.

Founding members of Pass-One are Wayport, Tele2, Wificom, Fatport, Open Point Networks, Nomadix, Funk Software, Service Factory and TSI.

The WISP market is very dispersed and its players vary from very small coffee shop chains or a single airport to a large organization like Tele2 and Wayport. Pass-One's action plan is to organize this market by allowing the smaller and medium WISPs to survive, as well as to gather the WISP community around a legal entity that will enable the enforcement of a service standard in the industry. Pass-One is a WISP association and its members are ISP's, cellular carriers, and fixed line telco's whose offering also contains public WLAN services.

Open standards

WISP members decide on the service level to be delivered to their end-users, while WLAN vendors build the technical standard specifications to enable "open" and "workable" standards that can be implemented by WISPs of all sizes. Membership in the association is open to service providers of public access broadband services (today mainly through 802.11.b), such as ISPs and GSM carriers. Standardization is done through the contribution of participants, which are the WLAN vendors implementing the standards in their services and products.

The founding members together with the promoting participants are currently establishing the framework of the association while creating a "live" roaming environment, which will be the basis of the industry standard on roaming. The founding members invite the WISP community to join this mutual benefit association in order to boost public WLAN hotspot acceptance. The first founding planning meeting will be held in Boston, June 14, 2002 where WISPs can actually enjoy roaming services in a WLAN covered venue.

At the end of 2001 some WISPs, who became Pass-One founding members (US Wayport and French Wificom) found themselves in front of the industry's biggest obstacle: a lack of service standards to apply when roaming. Firstly the roaming scenario was (and still is) not defined, and secondly the background of most of the WISPs differs substantially. This was certainly not a driver for a uniform approach of the roaming area. In order to overcome these constraints the Founding Members therefore decided to gather around the table and to establish a central entity that provides these required standards and at the same time offers consolidated administrative services to all member WISPs.

"As a leading provider of Wi-Fi high-speed Internet access with one of the largest public wireless networks in the U.S., Wayport became a founding member of Pass-One because we believe that seamless roaming is the key to success for the industry to reach critical mass," said Dave Vucina, CEO, Wayport. "We believe that a global user-driven approach along with near-ubiquitous wireless connectivity through roaming will create a massive business opportunity by delivering true mobility."