Report: Carriers Deployed More Than 7 Million Wi-Fi Access Points

More than 7 million carrier-grade Wi-Fi access points have been deployed by telecom operators worldwide as of year-end 2012. Growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.5%, that’s going to grow and reach 15 million by 2018, according to a new research report from Berg Insight.

Berg analysts forecast that the installed base of Wi-Fi-enabled handsets will grow from nearly 1.5 billion units as of year-end 2012 to more than 4 billion in 2018. Now convinced of Wi-Fi’s capabilities and faced with fast growing demand for mobile data services, mobile network operators and equipment vendors are increasingly turning to the wireless Internet standard as a solution.