Wi-Fi hotspot service giant Boingo is buying its biggest airport hotspot competitor Advanced Wireless Group (AWG) for an undisclosed sum. As a result of the acquisition, Boingo customers will gain access to AWG’s hotspots in 17 U.S. airports. The deal will extend Boingo’s lead in airport Wi-Fi, with 30 of the 50 biggest airports in the United States, as well as 80 airports worldwide — more than 40% of the world’s top 50 airports.
Boingo will gain AWG hotspots that currently serve the following airports: Baltimore (BWI), Boston (BOS), Buffalo (BUF), Burbank (BUR), Charlotte (CLT), Detroit (DTW), Indianapolis (IND), John Wayne (SNA), Los Angeles (LAX), Miami (MIA), Minneapolis – St. Paul (MSP), Oakland (OAK), Omaha (OMA), Providence (PVD), Sacramento (SMF), and San Diego (SAN). The company has also been chosen to operate the public Wi-Fi services in Phoenix’s Sky Harbor (PHX) airport.
If you’re a Boingo hotspot customer, you probably won’t notice a difference, though. That’s because Boingo already has a roaming agreement with AWG, so the only likely difference would be that you will automatically connect to the former AWG access points, instead of having to login first.
Boingo has a lot riding on the continued future of airport W-Fi, and the company recently started private trials of emerging “Hotspot 2.0” Wi-Fi technologies in parts of Chicago O’Hare Airport. Hotspot 2.0 is a new wireless industry standard technology that enables mobile devices to automatically authenticate and connect to hotspots through secure connections.
Boingo expects the deal to close in the fourth quarter. Neither company has disclosed financial terms of the deal.
