May 12, 2005 - (HOSTSEARCH.COM) - Web hosting providers may want to look at new ways to find revenue with the prices of hosting plans falling rapidly and many new free hosting plans being offered. New technologies that add to the ubiquitousness of the Internet should help to open up opportunities. One new use of technology web hosts may want to take note of is Boingo Wireless’ in-flight Wi-Fi roaming, making the company the first to offer wireless data access covering in-flight.
The expanded wireless roaming coverage is a result of an agreement with Connexion by Boeing that integrates all of the flights equipped with the company's high-speed Internet and data service into the Boingo Roaming System.
With access to this complete network, business travelers can now use their Boingo account to access more than 17,000 hot spots at restaurants, hotels and airports as well as an expanding number of International and soon U.S. domestic flights.
As bandwidth capabilities grow the Internet will compete with traditional means of radio and television broadcasting. This opens up a broad new avenue of technical challenges and opportunities for web hosting companies looking to differentiate themselves from their competitors.
The web hosting providers that can provide software and services geared towards the production of television and radio shows will be able to open new revenue streams while hosts that think only of web hosting as providing box-in-a-rack services may soon find large ISPs and companies like Yahoo!, Google, and GoDaddy using their financial muscle to squeeze them out of the market.
“I think it’s the nature of business for things to consolidate,” said GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons in an interview with HostSearch.com earlier this year, “For example, there used to be hundreds of car manufacturers and now it would be almost impossible for a new company to start-up in that industry.”
Netcraft recently reported that GoDaddy has gained 294,368 new sites in just the first 5 months of 2005 while the top 4 domain registrars combined, including GoDaddy, have gained more than half a million.
With large corporations with more than just web hosting operations muscling-in it will take innovation to survive. EasySpeedy’s Managing Director Tina Lerche gave her take on the situation in an interview with HostSearch.com last month, “The industry is fast asleep, and competition is just a matter of end user prices and size of advertising budgets. Providers offer identical services and are as undifferentiated as the companies selling toilet paper. No wonder why customers are changing providers all the time.”
As the Internet enters the skies and every other area our lives web hosts should be prepared to take advantage.
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