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Pizza Without Wires
a2gsg was one of several to submit this story about a pizza chain in Malaysia building a high-speed wireless broadband network -- so its customers can order pizza and connect to the net. Pinoygrams, anyone?
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I tried to place an order, but it turns out I was in violation of the DMCA ...
Delivery
Man
Can't find
Address
Wow ... that was bad ... I will shut up now.
It was a reference to Neal Stephenson's novel Cryptonomicon, if I'm not mistaken. In the book, "Pinoygrams" were the short video-greeting-cards that Filipinos overseas could send home to family, to be viewable for a small fee at convenience stores with terminals. It was set up to finance the construction of a data haven IIRC.
Freedom: "I won't!"
More seriously, this is a good idea. By the way, SBUX has a few locations now with 802.11 in the cafe for surfing with your laptop - not quite the same scale, but similar in that they are filling in the coverage gaps where other carriers fear to tread (or go bankrupt - e.g. Ricochet).
sulli
RTFJ.
From the article: (my emphasis)
So it looks like they are expecting to recoup their expenses pretty quickly. Which begs the question, just HOW MUCH do one of these pizzas cost?
Possible advertisement? Buy a pizza for $500, get broadband access free!
:*)
I'm a bloodsucking fiend! Look at my outfit!
I can see the headlines already:
Get pizza fast. Surf for pr0n faster.
...are they going to recoup their losses? I don't care how much pizza they sell, broadband is expensive. I just don't see how this can work.
USA Intellectual Property Laws: 5 monkeys, 1 hour.
I'm the stranger...posting to
Finally, a company that gets it. 3G is so expensive... why do you think companies have scaled back large deployment of it? And here is a company (that isn't even a telco..) that is using 2.4ghz and 5.7ghz band (which is unlicenced, and therefore, free..) to have higher speed connectivity. This is similar to Apple's airport in design, since it is going to be using the 802.11 standard.... but Airport uses only the 2.4 ghz band.
I will be interested in knowing how this Pizza company will implement security. The free wireless networks in place in Seattle and San Francisco still do not have great security, as there isn't great security inherent in the protocol. I would hate to have someone snagging my email or telnet sessions out of the air.. (and yes, I do use PGP and SSH.. but many people do not...)
I do happen to find it interesting about this company... A pizza company no less. I work for a CLEC, and I see all kinds of executives here who still don't get broadband... (as crazy as that sounds, it is true..) I honestly hope that this company can implement this.
This reminds me of companies who designed broadband connectivity that went through power lines... and had an impossible time trying to convince the Power companies. They simply didn't understand the resources that they had. Now, we are entering an age where in fact wires can be made obsolete ( for the most part...) and we can send out high speed data though the air. Now, if we can just get the security down, and make sure that they don't cause cancer.. and microwave towers can...
Blah Blah Blah.
I know at Uconn and a few other college campuses, some of the restauraunts that do lots of business with the students have implimented forms where you can place your orders online, and receive a call when the food's ready (it caught on really well at Uconn, possibly partially because of the broadband internet connections that are pretty standard in college dorms nowadays). They usually band together and pay a third party to operate and maintain the internet service. All of the experiences i've had with the combination of food service with the internet have been fairly pleasant, it should be interesting to see how a more concrete co-mingling of the services will pan out.