AT&T announced today that it has agreed, through one of its subsidiaries, to acquire privately-held Wayport, a Wi-Fi services provider in the United States, for approximately $275 million in cash. The transaction is expected to close as early as the fourth quarter of 2008.
The acquisition expands the AT&T Wi-Fi footprint to nearly 20,000 domestic hotspots, takes the company’s global Wi-Fi presence to more than 80,000 locations. Wayport hotspots are in key locations, including select Wyndham, Marriott Vacation Club and Four Seasons hotels; HealthSouth and Sun Healthcare locations; plus McDonald’s restaurants. As Wayport currently provides back-office management for AT&T’s Wi-Fi Hot Spots, the acquisition expands such capabilities and brings management of Wi-Fi infrastructure completely under AT&T management.
“This provides a way for AT&T to expand aggressively into the hospitality, retail, and healthcare industries where Wayport is very strong,” comments Stan Schatt, Vice President at ABI Research.
“Equally important, Wayport has moved beyond simply providing Wi-Fi service to actively supporting key enterprise applications. The bottom line is that AT&T Mobility’s growth on the business side will come from being so deeply tied to customers’ business applications that companies won’t easily be able to extract themselves and embrace a competitor such as Verizon. On the consumer side, the exponential increase in AT&T hotspots to around 20,000 domestically and 80,000 globally, coupled with AT&T’s recent announcement of free Wi-Fi hotspot service for its wireless customers means that consumers will assess the ubiquity of AT&T’s Wi-Fi hotspot service as a tremendous value-add to their monthly wireless subscriptions, resulting in reduced churn,” Schatt adds.
