Bold European Wi-Fi predication from Forrester Research. (Across Europe).(Brief Article)

Forrester Research senior analyst, Lars Godell, said that most of the money being poured into Wi-Fi hotspots in Europe will be wasted. Godell says that Wi-Fi-enabled laptops and PDAs are the killer devices for hot spots, but current laptop penetration in Europe is low, as only about 10 percent of Europeans own laptops.

Godell expects laptop penetration to climb to 16 percent in 2Q08, which translates into approximately 7.7 million hot spot users in 2008. "With all the hype today about the rollout of WLAN public hot spots, it's as if the dot-com boom and bust never happened," Godell said. "We believe that much of the money being poured into public WLAN today to enable access - from places as diverse as bars, marinas, hotels, and airports, as well as train, bus, and metro stations - is being wasted. Simply, basic constraints on the number of devices in use and users' willingness to pay a significant amount for Internet access on the go will limit public WLAN users to numbers well short of planned network's carrying capacity. Additionally, the sky-high costs of providing Internet backhaul from hot spots will kill many hot spot business cases."