Wireless Week 2012 Leadership Awards:Following some savvy acquisitions and close to 30,000 hotspots, AT&T's Wi-Fi network has emerged as an exemplary value add for the carrier's customers.

It's one of those success stories from a major industry player that gets told over and over, if only to demonstrate the potential of a given technology. We're talking about AT&T's Wi-Fi business, which after the company's acquisition of WayPort has become a major value add for its customers, as well as a complement to its cellular network.  

Before launching into the truly impressive stats, Dennis Whiteside, assistant vice president of marketing & sales as AT&T Wi-Fi Services, says to stop him if you've heard it before. Whether you have or not, here’s a little refresher course.   

The AT&T Wi-Fi network features about 30,000 AT&T Wi-Fi hotspots. As a value add, most AT&T smartphone customers get access to the entire national Wi-Fi network at no additional cost, switching seamlessly from Wi-Fi to 3G without having to enter a password every time they walk into a McDonald’s.  

How customers are using those hotspots is as impressive as the network itself. AT&T saw a 550 percent increase in data uploads from mobile devices on the AT&T Wi-Fi network in 2011. Fully 1.2 billion AT&T Wi-Fi connections were made during 2011, with 486.9 million connections made in the fourth quarter.  

"In 2008, we did about 20 million connections for the entire year. This year, we'll do 20 million connections in four days," Whiteside says.  

AT&T had outsourced management of its Wi-Fi footprint to WayPort but in December of 2008 it closed the acquisition of the company. "It gave us a little more control over our destiny and the delivery of services to our customers," Whiteside says. Since then, it’s been all about scaling the business and getting the network to the point where it could handle the kind of traffic that a world brimming with smartphones and tablets was sure to bring.  

AT&T has since acquired SuperClick, a Montreal-based company that specializes in delivering Wi-Fi to the high-end hospitality space – probably a good fit when you consider that 45 percent of total AT&T Wi-Fi network traffic is driven by business travelers and longer connection times during guests' stays.  

Continuing to grow means continuing to innovate in any industry, and AT&T hasn't rested on its 30,000 hot spots. Rather, it continues to look for innovative ways to get customers connected. Take, for instance, the company's recently announced trial of ad-supported Wi-Fi at Dallas/Fort Worth Airport.  

"One of Dallas/Fort Worth's goals was that they wanted to improve and change the customer experience," Whiteside says, "and they wanted to provide free access to customers, and yet everyone recognizes that it costs millions of dollars to build out this infrastructure."  

The solution was to offer 40 minutes of Wi-Fi access – a fitting time for a layover – for watching a 30-second advertisement.  

Whiteside says that model may not be for everyone, noting that some high-end hotels might want their Wi-Fi service to be free and without ads. Others might want it to be free only for priority club members. "It really depends on the venue and what they want their user experience to be," he says. 

Regardless of whether consumers watch an ad to get Wi-Fi, pay a flat rate or access for free because they're an AT&T customer, the verdict is in that Wi-Fi is becoming an expected utility in many public venues. Take into account that 90 percent of tablets sold right now are Wi-Fi only and you start to understand how end users view the technology.  

Until now, public venues like airports, hotels and stadiums have been the major growth areas for Wi-Fi, but Whiteside says there's another segment that is poised for growth – retail.   

"I think people are going to see Wi-Fi more and more in the retail space, because consumers walk in, they've got their smartphone and they want to do barcode scans and compare prices and do online shopping even though they're already in the store,” he says. “That's going to change the entire consumer experience yet again.”