Wireless broadband access solutions provider
Novatel Wireless Inc.
(
NVTL
), has announced that it will launch its next generation WiFi
hot-spot MiFi 2, with Bell Canada, a subsidiary of
BCE Inc.
(
BCE
) on Mar 2013. Bell Canada's customers will be one of the first
in the world to get access to Novatel's innovative wireless
router MiFi 2, for high speed internet access.
MiFi 2, which is also known as MiFi Liberate is the first
touchscreen mobile hotspot with an entirely new user interface
that allows customers to handle the device at the touch of a
finger. Significantly, MiFi 2 shows all the features such as as
icons, which will help users to adapt to the various
functionalities of the hotspots easily and quickly. The latest
hotspot from Novatel provides users with data storage
information, shared storage capacity and location based
service.
The most important characteristics of MiFi 2 is that it can
connect upto 10 Wi-Fi enabled device simultaneously and features
an expanded battery backup that provides users with 11 hours of
usage time. Furthermore, the handy device can be easily carried
by customers.
San Diegobased Novatel, has previously launched its MiFi 2
product with US based carrier
AT&T Inc.
(
T
). Leading US carrier
Verizon Communications Inc.
(
VZ
) which has already launched Novatel's MiFi 4620 is also expected
to launch the touchscreen version of the hotspot in the first
half of 2013.
Wi-Fi hotspots have been used by mobile carriers to attract
customers by attaching it with broadband or wireless offerings as
a value added product. Nevertheless, this picture is expected to
change with the extraordinary data growth. Carriers are now
expected to use a hotspot as a strategy to offload the huge data
traffic on its network. Research firm In-Stat forecasts that
hotspot users will reach 120 billion connections by 2015
According to Bell Canada, MiFi 2 along with its expanded LTE
network base will allow customers to transfer data across
multiple devices in real quick time, often at a much faster speed
than traditional broadband connection. We believe the tie up
could significantly increase Novatel's customer base as Bell
Canada leads the Canadian telecom market in terms of subscribers.
Additionally, the enhanced features of MiFi 2 will attract Bell
Canada's enterprise customers as it will allow them to connect
more devices, thus reducing their operating cost.
However, Novatel faces increased competition from smartphone
manufacturers as most of the latest smartphones have inbuilt
Wi-Fi capacity thereby minimizing the need of external WiFi
hotspot like MiFi 2.
Currently, Novatel carries a Zacks Rank# 3 (Hold).
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