Toshiba Taking Grassroots Approach

While T-Mobile is taking a corporate approach to hotspot proliferation, Toshiba is taking a grassroots approach. Earlier this summer Toshiba announced its Wireless Broadband Hotspot, a $200 HotSpot in box solution. Toshiba let's HotSpot owners set their own access prices and provides authentication, authorization and accounting. Revenues are split 50/50 between Toshiba and hotspot operator. To help boost hotspot traffic Toshiba has partnered with iPass and will support iPass' Wi-Fi roaming standard. In exchange iPass will list Toshiba powered hotspots in its directory. Toshiba plans to have 1000 hotspots lit by the end of the year. It will be interesting to see if Toshiba can hit that number. While Toshiba's model is low cost, the challenge is convincing location owners that a hotspot will make them money.

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