A survey of press and analysts ahead of MWC comes out strongly in favor of Wi-Fi; press offer top tips for better coverage

Milpitas, Calif, February 27, 2012 - Kineto Wireless, Inc., an innovator in the mobile industry, today revealed 89 percent of press and analysts registered to attend Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2012 would like to see carrier-branded Wi-Fi services in place to complement the 3G networks.

The overwhelming majority, industry experts who cover the telecommunications industry, said they would like to see carrier- branded VoIP services during Mobile World Congress because it is simple to connect and would enable trusted, secure services.

Nearly 80 percent reported they would opt to offload their voice calls over Wi-Fi if they could, with the prohibitively high cost of roaming cited as the main reason.

A massive 90 percent of registered MWC media believe Wi-Fi coverage is critically important, with 80 percent actively seeking out Wi-Fi hotspots at the show.

Sixty nine percent of respondents said Wi-Fi coverage had been ‘poor’ at previous shows and offered the following personal tips for finding better Wi-Fi coverage during MWC:

    Avoid trying to connect at lunchtime or first thing in the morning

    Use the conference venue rather than press centre

    Avoid large crowds using laptops

    Before pressing send or publish, check if connection still alive

    Hang around the booths of the major vendors and hope they have an open ‘guest’ network

    Near the App Planet, the signal is stronger. But it's a little secret… shhhh…

    Make sure your hotel has good Wi-Fi. Relying on conference broadband is always dangerous and puts your coverage at risk

“Wi-Fi will be one of the most enduring stories following this year’s Mobile World Congress. Whether for offload or coverage, all of the major carriers have a Wi-Fi strategy,” said Steve Shaw, vice president of marketing for Kineto. “Kineto has a new Smart VoIP application that addresses many of the issues our survey respondents cited. It helps operators create and brand their own over-the-top service to meet subscriber demands for mobile VoIP. If the people who analyze and write about telecoms believe operator VoIP is important, then you can bet the people reading their stories do – whether they’re end consumers or the carriers.”

Last week, Kineto launched Smart VoIP that supports a range of standard mobile telephony capabilities and is designed to run on major mobile operating systems, including iPhone®, Android® and Windows Phone®. The application can be branded by mobile operators and downloaded to subscribers through standard application stores.

For more information about Kineto’s Smart VoIP solution, please visit http://www.kineto.com/smart_voip.php.