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The Cost of Free Wi-Fi:
Five Reasons Free Wi-Fi is Bad for Business

Although providing an immediate cost advantage, free Wi-Fi is anything but free. This paper examines the leading reasons why free Wi-Fi is bad for business.

Today’s world is more mobile than ever before. Recent forecasts show staggering growth in the number of mobile workers, not only in advanced economies like the US and European Union, but also in emerging economies like China, India, and Brazil. Taken in total, the world’s mobile worker population now stands at over a billion. And for these business users, mobility equals productivity.

In a data-driven world, mobile workers need high-speed, high-quality Internet connectivity to perform a variety of business tasks, from sharing large files, accessing cloud-based apps, and downloading video content.

Survey results show that mobile workers clearly favor Wi-Fi to cellular for Wi-Fi’s lower cost, greater speed and higher reliability. And in fact, the overcrowding of cellular networks has already lead to significant data offload to global Wi-Fi networks, which are poised to carry up to 60% of mobile data by 2019.

Yet global Wi-Fi’s popularity amongst this segment of the workforce creates challenges for employers. Without IT intervention, mobile users flock to free Wi-Fi. Although providing an immediate cost advantage, free Wi-Fi is anything but free. This paper will examine the secret costs of free Wi-Fi, offering the five leading reasons why free Wi-Fi is bad for business.

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