Over 50 leading WLAN companies convened in Boston at the Founding Meeting of Pass-One, a new international association formed by wireless Internet service providers (WISPs). The goal of the new organization is to facilitate 'barrier-less roaming'between wireless networks. To this end, the participants agreed in principle to establish a global service as a recognizable indicator of duality wireless connectivity. More than 20 WISPs (including many of the major North American cellular carriers) and 30 WLAN equipment vendors agreed on an action plan to deliver to the market a globally accepted service level standard.
The new association will focus on creating a global standard for wireless Internet service. As a part of this effort, Pass-One will certify WISPs as being compliant with a minimum set of service requirements. Once certified, these WISPs will be able to display the Pass-One service mark at all of their service locations so that end-users will know that quality wireless connectivity is available. The Pass-One certification process will also ensure that member WISPs can offer barrier-less roaming between their networks for end-users. Fees and dues for Members and Participants are defined by the Executive Committee and consist of a flat annual fee. The fees for both Members and Participants are set at USD 10,000 or EUR 10,750 and will cover the rest of the year 2002. The application form to be filled in with a view of applying for Membership or Participation will be available on www.pass-one.com as of Monday June 24th, 2002.
An association with a clear mission
The end-user will want to find all public WLAN hotspots and have the same user experience. Pass-One's mission is therefore to create one global level of minimum service standards, and certify compliance of its members' networks. Similar to the credit card industry, Pass-One members will be able to use the Pass-One global service mark as a recognition tool for end-users.
Helping many players form one market.
Today, the WISP market is highly fragmented, and its players range from small coffee shop chains or a single airport to larger organisations like Tele2 (Sweden) or Wayport (USA). Pass-One's action plan is to organise this market by providing also smaller and medium WISPs with a viable business environment. Pass-One is a non-profit association, and its members are primarily WISPs, traditional ISPs, cellular carriers and fixed line telco’s whose offerings also contain public WLAN services.
A focused action plan with dedicated resources.
The current Executive Committee, consisting of representatives from FatPort (Canada), Open Point Networks (USA), Wificom (France), and Tele2 (Sweden), and its Chairman, Phil Belanger from Wayport (USA) have together with a number of participating industry experts laid out a challenging roadmap with clear milestones for the upcoming months. Working Groups have been established and are dedicated to use the most cost-efficient tools to deliver the service standards for the industry. Pass-One has a clear and focused action plan: deliver a service mark to the industry before the end of 2002.
