Software giant Microsoft has received a license from Wi-Fi software vendor Devicescape allowing it to access a database hosting 11 million hotspots — 1 percent of global hotspots — and to provide its Windows Phone 8 OS users with the locations to find the Net.
The service, in addition to enabling Windows Phone 8 handsets to locate the availability of free WiFi hotspots, will also help them know the quality of the signal.
The hotspots will include those provided by cafes, railways stations, airports and public bodies.
Devicescape says it will enable this through its database that filters out the most frequented hotspots in an area by noting sites that most mobile handsets have accessed, as well as the favored ones in delivering quality signals.
Except in the U.S where Microsoft has entered into an agreement with Verizon, the handsets will be able to access WiFi from all service providers with the service available in the U.S from the last week of November and globally by year end.
The hotspots can be accessed through the newly launched Microsoft Data sense app, the handsets in built maps as well as Local scout found in Bing Search.
To Devicescape, this is its biggest deal so far with the company’s CMO David Nowcki saying the deal was born out of good working relationship over the years.
“We’ve never in the past had a distribution deal like this where our data was being validated and on a major platform. It’s a major step forward for Microsoft to want to use this kind of data as opposed to something that hasn’t been verified,” Nowcki told FierceBroadbandWireless network.
