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London crowned world's Wi-Fi capital

Hotels are also popular -- accounting for almost one-third of global usage -- and are becoming increasingly so, with 146 per cent growth on the same period last year.

Railway stations and ferries also contributed to worldwide Wi-Fi growth, according to the index, with usage at the former rocketing 238 per cent. iPass said new Wi-Fi deployments on trains are likely to continue to fuel this growth.

And if more rail operators follow the example of National Express, which offers free Wi-Fi on the UK's East Coast Main Line, this will surely be the case. The rail operator recently reported it has seen Wi-Fi usage triple on the line after making it free to log on.

The index also shows up a trend for increasing use of Wi-Fi in restaurants -- which conjures up images of lonely business travellers at tables for one.

iPass found restaurant Wi-Fi usage was up 217 per cent year-over-year. By contrast, growth in cafés and book shops was much less impressive (35 per cent and 26 per cent respectively). Nonetheless cafés remain the most popular retail locations for Wi-Fi.

When it comes to alternatives to Wi-Fi, iPass found 3G is the dominant cellular tech -- accounting for 70 per cent of all connections.

Monthly usage of 3G mobile broadband increased steadily through 2007, growing from an average of 152MB per user in Q1 to 190MB in Q4. The index also found the most established users tend to eat the most megabytes -- suggesting usage rises with experience.

A surprising finding is that some users had to fall back on slower 2.5G technology, perhaps owing to 3G coverage issues: 62 per cent of users required 2.5G at some point each month.

A spokesman for iPass said enterprise mobile connectivity is likely to remain a tale of more than one technology.

He said in a statement: "The results of our Mobile Broadband Index suggest that no single technology can meet all the needs of an enterprise workforce. While 3G provides broadband download speeds in domestic metropolitan areas, users need Wi-Fi hotspots for fast bi-directional access everywhere else as well as to avoid high international 3G roaming charges. We expect both Wi-Fi hotspots and 3G to continue to grow as enterprises roll out a complete toolkit to their mobile workers."