Chennai: Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs), the latest Internet access medium which is fast becoming popular in the Asian countries, is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 23.5 per cent till 2009, according to Frost & Sullivan.

According to a most recent Asia Pacific WLAN market report of Frost & Sullivan, leading international market analysts, the industry's revenues which stood at $ 421.2 million in 2002 is all set to touch $ 1.84 billion by 2009.

The market grew by over 53 per cent in 2002 alone in the Asia Pacific region, the report says.

"The flurry of wireless Internet and corporate Internet log-ins by the region's small businesses and mobile users can only be attributed to WLANs being fairly affordable, increasingly available and offering enviable bandwidth of upto 54 mbps," says Subha Rama, industry analyst, Frost & Sullivan.

Subha, who spearheaded the study, says that although off to a delayed start, this region was poised to see the next big surge in enterprise and commercial deployment of WLANs this year after North America and Europe.

Subha says that the growth of this market had been evident since the second half of 2002 with the number of "hotspots" or public Internet access escalating as the telecom operators started working alongside Internet service providers to target metro areas, airports, business precincts and hotels in the Asia Pacific.

"The lure of this technology which is turning out to be a profitable business proposition is evident from the fact that South Korea alone is planning more than 8,000 hotspots," she says in the study report.

According to the study, introduction of new "killer applications" such as voice over WLAN (beyond pure e-mail and Internet access) will spur the growth of this market.

PTI