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Verizon To Offer WiFi At Pay Phones
Makarand writes "Verizon has ambitious plans to catapult pay phones from the pre-cellular
era to the WiFi era by
creating hotspots around pay phones using an extension of
their DSL service. The current plan is to upgrade 200,000 pay phones
in the New York metro area to provide a WiFi service. Although major
metros are spotted with hotspots, finding them is usually a big problem. Verizon
thinks that specially marked WiFi enabled pay phones would
solve the problem of locating the hotspots." Sounds similar to Bell Canada's move to do the same.
I'd love to see payphones miniaturized and extended into both wireless broadband hotspots and VoIP phone points. This could lead to more bang for the buck for Verizon.
"I am root. Bow before me." To this I say, "You are root, and you bear the sins of the world upon your shoulders."
I can imagine some guy loading up a copy of aim at one of these hot spots to recieve a message "if you log out of aim, I'll shoot you, do not tell anyone what I've told you" etc.
they could even make a movie about it.. er
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|-_-| . o O ( bEef!)
Hey, you, get out of my office!
Verizon is obviously not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. Even the telecomm analyst says this could be a, "moneymaker." Yet conspicuously absent from the press release is any discussion of pricing.
Is there any word on how much they expect to charge for this? How the billing will be performed? Can you use your laptop as-is, or will you be required to install some custom software (almost certainly Windoze-only)?
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
"...please insert another quarter to get one more megabyte"
(sorry, couldn't resist)
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
I don't think that Verizon actually needs to do this. They don't really have an interest in keeping the payphones viable; they're phasing them out anyway. This is just an interesting new way to use existing infrastructure that would have otherwise been sent to the scrap heap.
I'm sure this will work the same as most broad-band in-hotel services. A NAT will not pass your packets until your MAC address has been authorized to do so. Until then, only outbound port 80 traffic does anything -> It redirects to the "Authorize this computer" webpage.
Perhaps existing Verizon customers can log-in to their account and authorize a MAC address (I'm sure it will be made easy), or a quick credit-card transaction will activate service.
I highly doubt you would ever have to actually "touch" the phone-booth. Just get close, flip the lid on your powerbook, have Safari auto-fill your authorization and away you go.
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
That's why Internet access is so important. Like, duh.
No, because thankfully Australia has superior "get a life" technology, which renders wi-fi at telephone booths hopelessly obsolete.
The article says they're "studying pricing plans." I wonder if they'll do a flat rate or what. I imagine they'd just put a DSL modem and a 802.11x box in each phone, and as we all know, once the cost of installing the base stations has been recovered, there's really almost no operating expense. They've got the DSLAMS in place around the city already and the could make support on the web only.
They're not likely to give it away, though. If they're smart they would tie it into their DSL service. They could provide one concurrent WiFi login per home DSL account. It could be your same login/password that you use for the crappy PPPoE service at home, and they could use the "captive firewall" as described above.
That might make me switch from Road Runner cable modem.
Now the pawnshops near the darker, more secluded phone booths will have better, cheaper prices on handheld devices and laptops.
I like to see companies piggybacking new technologies onto existing infrastructure. That guy who was trying to cover the nation will fail because he has to set up nationwide infrastructure, whereas Verizon has a space in most cities.
In addition, payphones are probably already laid out through the city to provide optimal reception (payphones have to occur at certain places and every so often). Also, not having to rent out new space in Manhattan is worth its weight in gold. The cabling is already in place, they just need to add a $30 piece of hardware to the top, and they'll probably use a large antenna to ensure a decent line of sight. The only thing left is to make them tamper-proof (fortress router anyone?).
Why not combine this with a packaged VOIP service.. beats standing in line for a pay phone right? stay within 50 feet or so of the phone, break out your laptop and makes calls via VOIP. yes i know my sig is broken.
magnanomous.
The most anyone could do is get past the authentication, so Verizon loses a little money, it's not a big deal. That certainly isn't havoc in my book.
Now what would be interesting is to have that wifi dsl and then also do an ad-hoc network and allow several people to get on through their own little gateway. Brings down the cost quite a bit I'd think...
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Wireless ISPs have to have some kind of mutual pricing scheme or its just not going to take off. Here in Chicago there are more than a few wireless providers, each taking a very small chunk of the city. Say I wanted wifi access at the coffeeshop next door I'd have to pay x amount per month or a pay for a punishing day pass price. The other coffeeshop or the wifi at O'Hare wants my money also, but I'm sure as heck not paying all three of them a month. That would be like $100 just for occasional wireless access.
Wifi cannot be sold like this. Its like a different owner for every cell phone cell in the city. "Oh so you drove into my cell, pay $30 a month buddy!"
There is a huge need for some kind of central billing authority that all these ISPs can share. Its this, spotty coverage, or some big monopoly is going to waltz in and buy all these small providers.
Considering that 802.11's range is exremely limited I don't see how anyone could be making real money off of it when it comes to in-store access. The coffeeshop has one lousy AP and even with a kick-ass 802.11 card you can't get much further than the curb outside the store. I'd much rather see business treat wifi as a service for its customers like free newspapers, bathrooms, etc. A DSL line and an AP and some authentication scheme isn't that expensive. I'd much rather pay a couple pennies extra per cup of coffee than pay yet another wireless provider.