History
Public access wireless local area networks (LANs) were first proposed by Henrik Sjödin at the NetWorld+Interop conference in The Moscone Center in San Francisco in August 1993. Sjödin did not use the term hotspot but referred to publicly accessible wireless LANs. Sjödin went on to found the companies PLANCOM in 1994 (for Public LAN Communications, which became MobileStar and then the HotSpot unit of T-Mobile USA) and Wayport in 1996.
The term HotSpot may have first been advanced by Nokia about five years after Sjödin first proposed the concept.
During the dot-com period in 2000, dozens of companies had the notion that Wi-Fi could become the payphone for broadband. The original notion was that users would pay for broadband access at hotspots.
Both paid and free hotspots continue to grow. Wireless networks that cover entire cities, such as municipal broadband have mushroomed.
Read more about this topic: Hotspot (Wi-Fi)
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