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Japan to buy Swedish Hotspot centres - at £19,000 each?

It's not the usual thing to find the Japanese adopting European technology, perhaps; but Appear Networks seems to have broken into the WISP (wireless ISP) provisioning business, through Mitsui. It has a product called Click & Run, which will now start appearing (ho ho) in Japanese hotspots.

Appear is based in the "wireless valley" near Stockholm, Sweden, and describes itself as "Franco-Swedish software vendor" which sells the Appear Provisioning Server (APS) to WISPs.

Provisioning isn't the supply of dried biscuits and propelling pencils. It's deciding what contextual services the WISP users will want, and making sure they don't get other ones. "Contextual services are applications that spontaneously appear, depending on varying criteria, such as who you are - say, a maintenance worker or railway passenger or where you are; or when you need information: on your lunch break or in between flights, perhaps.

"APS assumes that in real life, most users have rarely used a wireless device (pocketPC, tabletPC, laptop) other than a telephone, but that the majority of users are used to receiving e-mail on a desktop," says the official announcement, which will probably appear here in due course.

Mistui will be doing the marketing, and Appear's directors think Mitsui has a foot in the door of the phone network providers, who are now rushing to catch up with the free WLAN business, hoping to make money out of it.

"It is an honour to sign this distribution contract with Mitsui", said Xavier Aubry, Business Development Director for Appear Networks. "Mitsui is one of the most renowned trading companies in Japan having an extensive network of contacts with leading telecoms operators. Signing with Mitsui gives Appear Networks instant access to the largest Japanese operators."

The total number of hotspots in Japan is forecast to reach 60,000 by 2006 (Source EC Research, Softbank Group) and, in Asia, has already risen above the European level. As the number of public hotspots continues to increase, hundreds of companies are simultaneously deploying internal networks for their own workforces in access zones known as "workspots".

Exactly how ambitious this deployment is, you can gauge from the price of a single "provisioning" rollout: "Prices will begin at JPY3.5 million (£19000) for a standard trial deployment and Mitsui aims to achieve an annual sales target of JPY1 billion (£5.3 million) after three years," the partners revealed. It will startle a lot of people in the free WiFi business to hear that so much money can be made ...