It’s Thanksgiving week here in the US, and while I’m a Brit, I’m always happy to celebrate somebody’s holiday with them! So, for those who will be enjoying large meals and catching up with their family over the long weekend, I wish you all a happy Thanksgiving. And for everybody in our global community, whether you’re on holiday or at work, I thought I’d throw out some statistics about Wi-Fi usage, internet usage and Devicescape usage that I thought were interesting.

Mobile Internet
I was presenting at a JETRO Houston event last week where one of the many interesting things I learned from my co-presenters was that in the late teen to early twenties age range, more people access the internet through a mobile device than with a computer or laptop. And the next couple of segments in that chart weren’t far behind either.

Japan has a great mobile data infrastructure to support this of course, and a lot of public access Wi-Fi networks, all of which help to make mobile access simple. The real surprise for me though was the low number of smartphone users (around 2% of mobile subscribers). I’m sure with the popularity of devices like Apple’s iPhone that will change, but just think where those usage statistics are headed if you give people devices capable of a much richer internet experience.

Mobile Wi-Fi
Two very mobile Wi-Fi applications have been making the headlines recently: in car Wi-Fi (from Autonet Mobile) and the recent press flight Virgin America hosted to show off in-flight Wi-Fi access using Aircell’s gogo service.

While I saw a number of stickers advertising the Autonet in-car Wi-Fi at the San Francisco Auto Show last weekend, I didn’t manage to find a signal to connect to so I couldn’t try it out.

Glenn Fleishman over at Wi-Fi Net News was one of the folks on the plane for the Virgin flight however, and he has written up a number of pieces about his experiences, including one live from the flight. I also exchanged some Twitter messages with him while he was on board about the fact that he was using ssh over the link and reported that it was very usable.

Devicescape Usage
It has been a busy couple of months at Devicescape since the launch of Easy Wi-Fi for iPhone and iPod touch in Apple’s App Store, and Nokia increasing the number of their S60 platforms that have the option to download it right there on the phone. With the many new users finding Devicescape Easy Wi-Fi for the first time, we’ve had a noticeable increase in the traffic on our forum (which we’re very happy to see), and also a lot of new networks being sent in for us to add support for.

We have almost doubled our network count (i.e. the number of SSIDs we recognize as hotspot networks) in the recent weeks, and while a lot of those were additional SSIDs for existing services, we also have a very steady stream of user requested networks that we’re working as fast as we can to add.

One interesting number I thought I’d share with you is that we’ve now seen successful connections from our rapidly growing user base at over 80,000 different locations around the world. Including cases where the user didn’t have an account to access the network, or we didn’t know about the network at the time, our users have visited over half a million different hotspot locations!

By locations here, we’re talking about access points actually, so the number of physical addresses is probably a little lower since many of the more popular locations, like airports and larger cafes, will have more than on access point installed to provide full coverage. But that’s still a lot of places!

One of the things that always frustrates me when I travel is the high cost of Internet access, especially at hotels. Oddly enough, it seems to be the premium hotels that charge extra for access, while the lower end chains give it away for free. I checked into a hotel near Heathrow Airport in London a few weeks ago and noticed that they had an “Executive Upgrade” which included Wi-Fi access and breakfast for $20. When I asked about the costs for Wi-Fi alone they told me it was $30. I guess the thinking there was that executives would be so dumb they’d need big help figuring out which one to choose!

Anyway, I went with the upgrade, but amazingly they warned me that I likely wouldn’t be able to actually access Wi-Fi from my room but I could certainly use it in the lobby. Now that’s great service. At least breakfast was ok.

It’s long been a bone of contention for many road warriors to pay high access fees when traveling. The all you can eat cellular data and Wi-Fi plans we have enjoyed at home suddenly rack up enormous roaming fees, and we encounter high price “session islands” like these hotels. Most of the time you don’t need access for long periods of time: just a quick sync of email, a VoIP call to the office or home, or wrangling with your flight operator’s website for non existent upgrades. To pay $10, $20, or $30 for that privilege is just plain maddening.

Recently Devicescape started a field trial of a new service we’re calling Devicescape One. It allows you to get access at a wide range of commercial Wi-Fi networks and pay by the minute. Devicescape One isn’t meant to replace your existing subscriptions or change your belief that Wi-Fi should be free. It’s there as a complement and an alternate to buying expensive session passes that are more than you need.

I had the chance to use Devicescape One on my last trip across Europe and a week later in Asia. It gave me access to several large networks which weren’t handled by roaming arrangements with my home Wi-Fi subscriptions. Even better I avoided using cellular data, where you pay by the KB instead of by the minute (one Outlook sync contained a 7MB Powerpoint presentation but it transferred in less than a minute!) For me, the minute by minute approach has broad appeal.

We’re running this Devicescape One field trial to check out the technology and assess the usage patterns and interest. There’s no guarantee that we’ll actually turn this into a real live service that costs our members anything, but it seems clear that this kind of scheme has its place and a partner of ours may like to use the capability.

Right now, we’re offering the trial to a limited set of Devicescape members. When you sign up we give you up to 120 minutes of Wi-Fi time. There is ZERO cost involved and no obligation. If you’re interested in joining the trial, you can sign up here. Note: you need to be an existing Devicescape member first.

Devicescape users who are attending the Linux World 2007 show in San Francisco can add the show’s free hotspot network to their ‘My WiFi’ list to have their devices connect automatically.

No need to see that captive portal just to sync your email, or to make that VoIP call home. I’ve tested it on my laptop (running Linux of course since this is Linux World), and my Nokia N95 mobile. Check out my history below, and please leave a comment if you use the service while you’re at the show.

If you’ve been reading our blog lately, you’ll have noticed that our own John Gordon is on the road in Europe adding wi-fi networks from pubs, cafes, city centres - and did I mention pubs? I think we need to do the same! Let’s hit the streets, add some hotspots and get them onto the Devicescape so the next time we circle back, our smartphones, tablets and other devices will connect automatically! It’s easy to do - just go to our submit a network form and fill in the fields. And don’t forget to tell us where your faves are - we might want to hit them ourselves!

Happy Hotspotting!