“WiFi can extend coverage for operators where carrier data is out of reach”

As telecom operators look towards extending their reach and delivering more capacity to the consumers, public WiFi can become a key enabler to ensure better customer experience, however, they need to adopt innovative monetization techniques in order to do more with their network investments. Purple WiFi is one organization that can enable this transformation for operators.

Collin Tan, Regional Manager ASEAN, Purple WiFi speaks with Zia Askari from TelecomDrive.com on the company’s strategy to reach out towards the telecoms market in ASEAN and deliver innovative solutions for the operators.

What are your priorities for driving Purple WiFi in the ASEAN region?

Purple WiFi has a partner-centric strategy, so we deliver our services through a variety of channels, eg: distributors, resellers or White Label partners. As such, a strong channel partnership ecosystem is crucial to the long term success of Purple WiFi in ASEAN.

My immediate focus will be to onboard credible resellers in the traditional IT infrastructure sector as well as marketing agencies who provide consultancy services to their clients. In addition, in order to be very successful in the region, Purple WiFi will work with at least one large Telco in each country directly for white label opportunities.

WiFi is playing an important role in telecom operators data strategy today. What more can be done to increase its penetration today?

Business owners know that people will spend more time and more money in a venue that offers reliable free WiFi. They also know that their customers have long forgone the idea of paying for a WiFi service. So in order to attract business owners to continue to provide reliable and good quality WiFi services, we will need to enable monetisation through the use of mobile applications where WiFi becomes the enabling platform, thereby achieving ROI.

With connected devices growing in a big way, coverage and capacity become a concern. With WiFi technology, the operators can adopt WiFi as a cost effective way to support their indoor coverage.

We see a lot of public wifi deployments happening in many parts of ASEAN countries including India and Singapore - how do you look at the carried grade wifi segment? How can operators gain on profitability with Public Wifi?

When we work with carrier grade WiFi, we guarantee a quality of experience, incorporating elements such as connection speed, latency and prioritization. Operators should also be able to monitor and address these issues from the core network with support systems tools. It is very important to ensure that the WiFi service is able to support a user experience that is comparable to that of a cellular network.

Operators can increase their profitability with Public WiFi by developing a monetization strategy. Data capture of users should be done in a seamless way during the login process, with backend analytical reports presented in a meaningful manner.

What kind of customers base does Purple WiFi has today in the ASEAN region? what are your expectations to get more customers today?

We have more than 300 installations across the ASEAN countries at the moment and growing. Customers range from Telcos, Hospitability, Retail, Leisure, Food and Beverage businesses.

As Purple WiFi has a partner-centric strategy, our resellers and white label partners will form our extended sales force to engage with the end-customers and bring in business. Once we have the right partners in place, we expect to see exponential growth of the ASEAN business.

How can WiFi contribute to an operator when they are looking at offering services on 2G, 3G and 4G technologies?

WiFi should be viewed as a complimentary offering to 2G, 3G and 4G technologies. With the amount of data piling up everyday and the number of devices that are connecting to the internet increasing, it makes both commercial and practical sense for the operator to offload data from the mobile network to WiFi in areas of congestion, in order to ensure the services are kept at an optimum level.

WiFi can also help to extend coverage in areas where carrier data is out of reach. Plus with Purple WiFi, the carrier gets so much more in return - with the analytics and marketing tools they can offer to local businesses.