Majority of U.S Businesses Willing to Pay More to Improve Indoor Wireless Access

A recent survey carried out by iGR reveals that a majority of businesses (56 percent) are seeking indoor mobility solutions and are willing to pay more for improved indoor coverage and capacity. The survey, which polled IT managers of U.S companies with 500 or more employees, indicates that they would be willing to pay an increase of between 15 percent and 30 percent per employee to improve the indoor cellular coverage.

Also, 92 percent would agree to pay even more if the solution also includes managed services  such as mobile device management (MDM), context-/location-aware services, Wi-Fi-as-a-service, hosted unified communications (UC), and cloud and/or PBX (News - Alert) integration.

Further 66 percent of IT managers showed a willingness to switch to a different mobile service provider if that carrier could deliver improved in-building coverage. Over 30 percent of companies who would make the switch would be willing to pay an increase of 15 percent to the new mobile service provider.

The iGR survey also revealed that 63 percent of surveyed businesses have an official BYOD policy and 14 percent of businesses have made it an official requirement for users to bring their own device.

Unified Communications (News - Alert) (UC) and mobile device management (MDM) are the two technologies in most demand in these enterprises. As indicated in the survey, 29 percent of businesses are willing to pay between $1 and $19 per employee per month for hosted UC, while 20 percent would sign up at the same cost for hosted MDM.

The survey clearly indicates that bring your own device (BYOD) is acting as a driving force behind the need for a better in-building mobile experience,  and a huge proportion of businesses are prepared to pay a premium to providers offering managed services.

Commenting on the survey results, Art King, director of enterprise services at SpiderCloud Wireless, a provider of scalable small cell enterprise radio access network (E-RAN), said, “Indoor coverage and capacity is an enormous opportunity to attract frustrated mobile business users who demand that their devices are fully functional anywhere/anytime,” adding, “With the freedom of choice granted by BYOD and with cloud services that enable relatively pain free switching, mobile operators who don't address their customers' demands may lose them."

King explained that the need of enterprises to focus their scarce IT resources on creating competitive advantage has forged an opening for forward-looking mobile operators to deepen their customer relationships beyond devices and SIMs.

“As we head further into this decade, well-operationalized services are increasingly necessary due to personnel shortages caused by explosive growth in needs, escalating compensation expenses, and the pace of retirement of today's tech workers,” he said.