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Starbucks Clashes With WiFi Hobbyists Over Airwaves
fobbman writes: "Portland Oregon's Pioneer Square (the heart of downtown) has had free WiFi access provided since February by Personal Telco, which is a local group of computer hobbyists. Now Starbuck's is planning on offering the same service on the same band in the same area for $29.95 a month, according to this story in the local fishwrap. Without regulation or licensing, and with WiFi growing, this could become a common problem."
Free vs. commercial shouldn't even enter into it. The real issue here is that companies are flooding a portion of the radio spectrum that has been set aside for general use and then clamouring for regulation after the fact in order to prop up their business model and turn "users" into "customers".
Yes, but the point of the story is that Starbucks (deliberately ?) chose to use the same frequency as the free guys.
And yes, the networks do manage to coexist, but with significant performance drops due to them sharing the same frequency.
Say no to software patents.
Starbucks main interest in this is merely to prevent people from sitting around their retail stores and using their computers for free. This way, they get to charge everyone for the space, inside the retail stores that they will occupy during the time they are using their computers. Of course, the cup of overpriced, high-margin, beverages made with over-roasted beans, to me should be considered fair charge for rent/use of the space.
Of course, Starbucks has gotten used to making a very, ahem - overly generous share of the profits for a beverage - what is it, something like 1200% gross margins? - so, now, they're just doing what comes natural, taking another market segment over in which they can jack us all up for the convenience of using our own property, our computers, while inside their location.
It will probably become the case that they will use some sort of technology to over-ride the ability of Personal Telco to provide free access anywhere near a Starbucks location. Then, those who want to even go near the place will be forced to pay Starbucks a damn subscription fee just to try and use what they once where able to use for free. Starbucks will, essentially, highjack the air in and near their retail locations.
So, seems to me that if everyone who was smart about this and committed to maintaining free access, they would cluster as many free access points around every Starbucks as they can.
the problem is rather simple. imagine another wireless isp, building a similar tower 10 feet away, and trying to use exactly the same segment of the RF band to serve its customers.
you get an insane loss of reliability and signal.
personaltelco would be fine with moving our AP to another channel, but we're loathe to establish a precendent.
I see no problem with Starbucks wanting to offer a service. This isn't ham radio they are using, so they can certainly charge money for it. The issue is whether they should use the same channel as a previously existing service. Before they were aware of it, they could have planned to use a particular channel. But, a prudent planner would have checked to see what was active in the area by simply checking out the RF in the area using WiFi equipment.
But Starbucks/T-mobile knows about it now. So they have to decide whether they want to continue to share the channel and have degraded service and impose degraded service on others, or whether they move to another channel and have good service without bothering others (until there are more services than channels available to accomodate). Even if they decide to stay, I won't call Starbucks as evil, because channel sharing is inevitable. However, if they demand that others move off the channel, then they are evil. We'll see.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
First of all, among equal level licencees, he who is first wins - since both parties are operating under part 15 rules, the Personal T. folks would win in an FCC action as they were on frequency first, and can prove it.
Second, he with the better license wins. Since 802.11b is FCC part 15 in a band that Hams occupy, get a licensed amateur to set up a station in that band, running max legal, and simply STOMP Starbucks out. Since a ham operates under FCC part 97, which trumps part 15, when Starbucks complains the ham can say "Sorry, but you have to ACCEPT all interference from my system - you are part 15, look at your license. Also, you are CAUSING interference in my system - stop immediately, as you are in violation of part 15."
While this sort of thing is frowned upon by the Amateur Radio Relay League, this may be what is needed to drive the message home to the companies that CASH does not make RIGHT.
www.eFax.com are spammers
> I'm wondering how Personal Telco can afford to provide access to two T1's for free.
It's donated by local ISPs. This is how all of the PersonalTelco sites in Portland are set up. The only exceptions are folks who set up a wireless node to share the bandwidth they pay for. And according to Adam Shand, one of the founders of PersonalTelco, the extra traffic acquired by doing this is negligible to the sharer.
However, PersonalTelco has taken the position that if your provider forbids sharing your connection, you shouldn't either. In other words, if you get your internet conenction from someone like AT&T Cable, you shouldn't set up a wireless node.
Everything PersonalTelco has been doing so far is on the up-&-up.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p