ICOA and Boingo Wireless Announce Wi-Fi Roaming Agreement for Airports
March 29 2004 - 11:17AM
PR Newswire (US)
ICOA and Boingo Wireless Announce Wi-Fi Roaming Agreement for
Airports Boingo Wireless Roams to Regional Airports with ICOA's
Airport Network Solutions WARWICK, R.I., March 29
/PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- ICOA, Inc., (OTC BULLETIN BOARD: ICOA.OB
- News), today announced a roaming agreement with Boingo Wireless
to add the airport Wi-Fi networks of ICOA's subsidiary, Airport
Network Solutions (ANS), to the Boingo(TM) Roaming System. ANS
networks at Sacramento International Airport (CA) and
Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport (GA) will join the
Boingo Roaming System soon and will be followed shortly by Baton
Rouge Airport (LA). Together, these airports service over 11
million passengers annually. The success of ANS in deploying
networks at smaller "origination and destination" airports, those
with between 2.5 million and 10 million passengers, reflects the
increased acceptance and demand for Wi-Fi services by business
travelers. "Wi-Fi services are not just for the biggest airports
any more -- business travelers now expect Wi-Fi in all airports
they visit. As equipment costs decrease and user demand increases,
all airports can deploy profitable high- quality networks that
their visitors will come to rely on," said Dave Hagan, Boingo
president and COO. "ANS is well positioned to leverage this trend
toward everywhere Wi-Fi access and we look forward to working with
them as they grow." ANS is a neutral-host provider that partners
with airports to design, install, operate, maintain, and manage
facility-wide public Wi-Fi networks. The company's turnkey service
manages all authentication, customer support, billing,
reconciliation and in-building roaming. This wireless
infrastructure can be branded by the airport and also opened up to
Wi-Fi aggregators and wireless ISPs as part of their own branded
services. "Airports are demanding open access networks that bring
the most benefit to passengers and workers, and with this agreement
ANS is demonstrating its commitment to being a vendor-neutral Wi-Fi
service provider," said Rick Schiffmann, CEO of ANS. "We chose
Boingo for our first roaming agreement because the company has
distinguished itself as the leading aggregator with an unmatched
footprint and consumer experience." "ICOA is extremely excited to
be working with an industry leader like Boingo. We intend to expand
this Wi-Fi relationship to cover other venues, such as: hotels,
marinas, and restaurant chains, in which ICOA is the Wi-Fi
solutions provider," stated George Strouthopoulos, CEO of ICOA. He
added, "We agree with Boingo's vision that Wi-Fi will be ubiquitous
in high-traffic areas, and we're excited to be working with them to
make this vision a reality." With this agreement, the Boingo
Roaming System expands to include more than 70 network operators
and more than 6,500 hot spots under contract worldwide. Boingo
packages this roaming system, along with its end-user Wi-Fi
software and a complete suite of back-office billing, roaming,
mediation and clearinghouse services into its Boingo Platform
Services offering for major carriers and ISPs. Platform Service is
a turnkey service that can be branded and launched by service
providers as a low-cost, rapid time-to-market alternative to
building their own networks.Current announced Platform Services
customers include MCI, Infonet Services, EarthLink, Fiberlink, and
Telecom Italia. About Boingo Wireless Boingo Wireless, Inc. is an
ultra-high-speed wireless Internet service available in thousands
of locations such as hotels, airports, cafes, and other public
places, in dozens of countries throughout the world. Both directly
and through major carrier and ISP partners, Boingo provides
business travelers with a wireless broadband Internet connection to
improve productivity while on the road. Through its Wi-Fi software
and Roaming System, Boingo makes finding and connecting to Wi-Fi
networks point-and-click simple and secure. More information about
Boingo is available at http://www.boingo.com/. About ICOA ICOA,
Inc., (http://www.icoacorp.com/) located in Warwick, RI, is a
provider of Public Broadband Internet Access. The company owns,
operates and manages private networks of Wi-Fi Hot Spots, Internet
Terminals (WebCenter3000(TM)), and distributed broadband systems
nationwide. ICOA operates in over 260 of the most sought after
public locations -- airports, hotels, marinas, transportation, and
conference centers. The Company provides fully managed broadband
Internet connectivity, transactions processing, Internet services,
and location based content and advertising. ICOA currently operates
installations at the San Francisco International Airport (SFO), the
Greater Baton Rouge, Louisiana Airport (BTR), Sacramento
International Airport (SMF), Rhode Island's Newport Harbor 'Hot
Zone', 140+ Panera Bread (NasdaqNM: PNRA - News)
(http://www.panerabread.com/) locations, Chicago's McCormick Place
Convention Center and several prestigious hotels. 'Safe Harbor' The
foregoing contains "forward-looking statements" which are based on
management's beliefs as well as on a number of assumptions
concerning future events and information currently available to
management. Readers are cautioned not to put undue reliance on such
forward-looking statements, whichare not a guarantee of performance
and are subject to a number of uncertainties and other factors,
many of which are outside ICOA's control that could cause actual
results to differ materially from such statements. For a more
detailed description of the factors that could cause such a
difference, please see ICOA's filings with the Securities and
Exchange Commission. ICOA disclaims any intention or obligation to
update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a
result of new information,future events or otherwise. This
information is presented solely to provide additional information
to further understand the results of ICOA. Contact: ICOA, Inc.
Erwin Vahlsing, Jr. (401) 739-9205 DATASOURCE: ICOA, Inc. CONTACT:
Erwin Vahlsing, Jr. of ICOA, Inc., +1-401-739-9205 Web site:
http://www.boingo.com/ http://www.icoacorp.com/
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