AT&T Bulks Up Wi-Fi With $275 Million Wayport PurchaseAT&T Bulks Up Wi-Fi With $275 Million Wayport Purchase

In a move to firm up its Wi-Fi business, AT&T on Thursday said it has acquired Wayport for $275 million.

Wayport provides back-office management for Wi-Fi hotspots and offers thousands of wireless hotspots in locations like Four Seasons hotels, McDonald's, and Sun Healthcare. The telecom said the acquisition will expand AT&T's Wi-Fi footprint to nearly 20,000 hotspots in the United States.

"Now is the right time for AT&T to affirm our commitment to Wi-Fi leadership," said John Stankey, AT&T Operations' CEO, in a statement. "By acquiring Wayport, we're giving consumers more ways to stay in touch and building a more robust network management solution for businesses. We're bringing ready access to the nation's leading Wi-Fi, wireless and IP networks on a global scale."

The move also makes AT&T well-positioned for the enterprise market, because it will be able to offer end-to-end Wi-Fi management. This makes the acquisition money well spent, said Stan Schatt, VP of ABI Research.

"Wayport has moved beyond simply providing Wi-Fi service to actively supporting key enterprise applications. The bottom line is that AT&T Mobility's growth on the business side will come from being so deeply tied to customers' business applications that companies won't easily be able to extract themselves and embrace a competitor such as Verizon," Schatt said in a statement. "Whether it's instant check-in at a Wyndham resort or location tracking of expensive equipment at hospitals, applications will place business customers in golden handcuffs that they won't really want to remove even if a competitor offers a less expensive subscription rate."

Casual consumers may also benefit, as an AT&T spokesperson said iPhone and select BlackBerry users, along with Laptop Connect and AT&T broadband customers, will have free access to the Wayport hotspots.