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Working Toward Roaming For Wireless ISPs
hrhsoleil writes "In the category of: This seems like a no-brainer and why-didn't-someone-do-it-before,
according to SearchMobileComputing, the Internet Protocol Detail Record Organization (IPDR) is pushing a set of specifications that would allow users to roam among different providers' hot spots. IPDR is an industry group that addresses billing issues for wireless carriers -- they've got the Wi-Fi Alliance, Gric Communications, and the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association backing them up on this one so it might actually get off the ground. It's about time that wireless ISPs get their act together and make roaming possible. If I can go to almost any bank machine in the world and be able to use it without needing to sign up for a new account, why can't I do the same with hot spots?"
It's great that wireless Internet is moving in this direction, even if it's going to take some time since wireless ISPs aren't interconnected yet. But I'm sure as with many wireless phone companies, providers will charge fifty cents a nanosecond to roam on another provider's network. If your wireless network doesn't reach you, just keep a look out for mysterious symbols on the sidewalk.
story here
You can use your bank card anywhere, because it's a distributed Universal ID system.
Your account includes a bank identifier, and an account identifier, which uniquely points to your pile of cash.
To allow a similar system w/ Wireless, you'd need some kind of 'accepted' universal ID system.... and we've a disussion of where this goes a few months back (see Liberty Alliance and MS's .net Passport)
Why aren't you encrypting your e-mail?
"If I can go to almost any bank machine in the world and be able to use it without needing to sign up for a new account, why can't I do the same with hot spots?"
I just hope that they don't charge me $2.50 everytime I want to use a someone else's hotspot.
Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot.
Order shall return.
Here's the core problem with interoperability...
Assume that the average contract is $40 a month. (About what it is now) Assume that a big company has a sizable saturation in an area.
Now, assume that a competitor comes into an area and wants to charge $30 per month. Interoperability means that this new competitor can provide the same service as the bigger company yet charge a lower price.
So, there must be fees that the smaller competitor must pay to the larger company in order for this to work. Do you think the larger company will be cheap? Do you think that they will *really* let the smaller company charge $30 and still make a profit?
Whatever this deal is, it'd better be mighty strong.
-Ben
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
I could quite easily open an account with the cheapest wISP I could find (say the caniadian one so I can save because of the exchange rate) then use a local wISP for access.
In this case the local WISP would surcharge you and your cheap WISP would pass the surcharge right along to you, perhaps with a handling fee to boot.
This not only prevents the scenario you speak about, but also allows the installation costs of a hot spot to be borne more by those who use that hotspot. If it's hard to get wireless into a particular area for whatever reason, trust me, whatever ISP installs a hotspot will cover that cost or they won't let you on.
cleetus
...because most (W)ISPs don't charge per minute and 99% of all ISP customers would not use an ISP that did.
.com recrations of past bad business plans, thank you very much.
The rest of the economic calculations is left as an exercise to the reader, but here's a hint:
($30/((60*24)*30))/5 where the number "5" represents a median number of WISPs/Hotspots across which a consumer will roam. The end number is less than 1% of 1 cent per minute. The electricity to store the transactions, the paper to print the bill and the customer service representitive to explain the service to the customer cost several orders of maginitude more than will ever be recooped. Stop wasting our time with stuipid post
And if all that weren't enough, there's probably an open access point available near by the doesn't charge.
The real problem with roaming and Wi-Fi lies with customers who try to cheat the system.
I'm not a cell phone expert, but I'm pretty sure a portion of the roaming charges you pay on your cell phone get passed on to the owner of the network you're roaming on. For instance, if you're a T-Mobile customer in a location with no T-Mobile cell, and you roam through an AT&T cell, part of the extra money T-Mobile charges you gets passed on to AT&T. A lot of big cell providers will negotiate roaming charges between themselves, so they can offer lower rates to their customers, and be more competitive than smaller cell providers.
The same would likely happen here. WISPs like Boingo and such would pass on some of the roaming charges to their competitors to gain access to their networks, allowing the customer to roam in the first place. And most likely, they would negotiate for better prices depending on how large their own network is (the more hotspots they operate, the less they have to pay someone else to use theirs). So while competition would drive prices down (which is a good thing), noone will be getting anything for free. At least not until the WISPs have paid off their investment into their infrastructure.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Its a great idea, but as in the case of every good idea, its already being done, and has a patent.
see:
6,633,761
6,665,537
Probably more but I'm too lazy to look.
www.bleepyou.com
On some devices, this is already done. From the article:
When's 802.11* going to support on-the-fly connection migration? Why can't I walk around a large area and switch between base stations automatically and invisibly as reception changes? That would go a long way towards making those "you're not tied down to anywhere"-type commercials a reality.
Granted, without the billing (because they feel that internet access should be free for their community), but many Dutch universities and research institutions together with SURFnet (the National Research and Education Network) have developed a roaming solution already. Based on IEEE 802.1x, EAP-TTLS and RADIUS it allows for seemless roaming between the participants.
This WiFi roaming has recently been extended and now institutions in Portugal and Croatia are joining as wel.
or we'd see "national plans" like cell phone providers have. You mention T-Mobile, which is probably not the only company who has agreements with other cell providers to allow T-Mobile customers to use other providers' networks free-of-charge. Free as in you pay more monthly for the ability to do this and certain freebies are taken out of your monthly allotment but instead of expensive and hard-to-estimate roaming charges you just have to keep up with how many minutes are in your base plan, along with how mobile-to-mobile minutes that were normally free when you are both on the T-Mobile network are deducted from plan minutes when you are on another provider's network and it affects night/weekend stuff and all that.
Overall, this plan could translate to ISPs without much alteration. However, the alteration that would take place would surely be COST to you the consumer.
As the founder of a free community hotspot , I wanna say, if giant corporations are willing to provide web services for free, because it's the only way to get people to come, why wouldn't we want to provide wireless access to those web services for free?
Basically, I don't see that the pay-to-play model of the wired ISP is the necessary model for wireless ISPs. In fact I think it's a doomed model. People are going to gravitate to the free hookups. It's not just cheaper, it's easier, and easier always wins.
It's not time to figure out how to get roaming on paid wireless ISPs. It's time to figure out how to stop charging for it.
"If I can go to almost any bank machine in the world and be able to use it without needing to sign up for a new account, why can't I do the same with hot spots?" Well you're comparing public and private and wired and wireless networks, Apples and Oranges. Banks use a private network between each other to communicate transactions and when you use the competitors ATM you get charged a service fee. Part of that goes towards using that private network. And from a buisness sense, it wouldnt be all that great to have your customers wandering around on other's networks yet you're still responsible for whatever they're doing.
The lead into this article says the groups behind this standard are the Wi-Fi Alliance, Gric Communications, and the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association. The Wi-Fi Alliance has been unable to get traction under its branded Wi-Fi Zones program from venues that would rather just show the network they're part of; GRIC is the increasingly distant number 2 player in corporate aggregated resale (i.e., no hotspots, just reselling hotspots); and the Canadian group has very very few hotspots in Canada. The leading Canadian WISP, FatPort, isn't part of this proposal.
More likely, the GSM Association's roaming standards group that drafted a long document (referenced here in June 2003) on handling WISP roaming for hotspots (with members on the committee from some of the world's largest cell operators) will become the backend.
Or, iPass, GRIC's rival, which will gross about $200 million in 2003 after a very successful public offering this year, will make its clearinghouse standard, which requires standardized authentication, the de facto method of fee settlement and roaming across networks. iPass has 10,000 hotspots under contract now, including T-Mobile, Wayport, and other major networks worldwide.
Freelance tech journalist for the Economist, MIT Technology Review, Macworld, and others
Does this mean I can set up a hot spot at my home or business and charge for access? Sounds like a great way to earn a little extra cash...
On the flip side, what if there are two different hot spots covering the same area, but which have different surcharges? Does this roaming system include a way of determining such things? What about a way of selecting the cheaper connection, or forcing a more expensive but better connection, or automatically rejecting connections to hot spots with surcharges that are too high?
The business model here would be for nationwide service providers to pay a modest fee to individual hotspots based upon how many of the providors customers succesfully use the hotspots. care and maintenance of the hotspot is done solely at location, and aside from billing, would be the bulk of the expenses for the providor.
It would be in the best interests of the hotspots to make them accessible to as many providors as possible, including independents.
The problems would be:
-- The hotspots would get money from providors, and no longer have much of an incentive to provide service for free to individuals not affiliated.
-- Both the provider and maintainer of the hotspot would want to keep records of who's using the hotspot.... for billing.
-- Stupid marketing people will think the business model works best as a per-minute or per-megabyte fee, and will fail conssitently until someone wises up and makes things consistently all-you-can-eat
--It wont be free
The benifits would be
-- Your wifi connection would work, more often than not, as seemless hand-off technology would be in the best interest of everyone involved
-- connections would develop a consistency as a multitude of providers do their damdest to make sure they can connect to as many hotspots as possible, and hotspots doing their best to connect to as many providers as they can.
-- Connecting gets easier for the user as everyone wants you using it as much as posible.
--Lots of people make money.
The way this was supposed to work from the X500 and LDAP people, using ASN.1 syntax, is 'uid=joe,dc=mac,dc=com' would tell you to forward the authentication lookup to "mac.com" as "joe". I could theoretically do this from an AP owned and operated by dc=speakeasy,dc=net. The authentication thingie on the AP would ask its favorite directory for authentication service, and that directory would do referrals.
All you need to know is that you are "joe" at "mac.com" and the password to your Keychain(TM). If you like something other than MacOS X, then you will have to remember your WiFi password in addition to any other passwords :) .
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
The banks had something of a head start in doing this, since they already had inter-bank facilities in place (for things like wire transfers and check clearing).
Also, when ATMs first became popular, the banks were very hesitant to allow the use of machines belonging to other institutions. At least in the US, it was the success of the NYCE network in and around New York City that really broke the ice.
Another interesting historical tidbit: when the banks first started to introduce ATMs, some of them went to a couple of big supermarket chains, and offered to put in the machines for a fee paid by the supermarket. The supermarkets said, "Guess again. We'll put in our machines, and charge you a fee when your customers use them." (At that time the largest holders of currency in the US were not banks, but supermarkets. I don't know if that's still true.)
We need client-side apps that can handle the complexity of multiple networks. As the WISPs get their server apps together, they'll offer roaming and competing logins in simultaneous geographical areas, in different bands/channels. The overlaps will provide seamless coverage, failover redundancy, and nightmarish complexity. The WISPs will be fully armed with apps to manage their complexity. But if all my client can do is login, and get a bill later, then I'm at the mercy of the providers. I need a client app that tracks all the complex offerings, presenting me with filtered, optimized choices when available, or just logging me in by a formula that *I* choose. And keeping a transaction trail. When the bills come, my dream client SW will diff the transaction logs, and submit complaints that I merely review and "sign". And traffic analysis will let me shop for better plans based on my actual usage history.
Where is the platform for this transaction agent for my "phone"? Let's get cracking in the apps, before the WISPs have completely 0wn3d the space, and we're at their mercy.
--
make install -not war
802.11x devices have a unique 6byte MAC, like any ethernet card. If packets or ACKs were signed with a key generated on the MAC, the traffic could be controlled. That would allow multiple devices each to receive unique traffic for a single user, like their phone, car and sunglasses.
--
make install -not war
I can't see myself paying $30 a month for cafe and hotel coverage in two years even if the roaming is seamless. EDGE is available nation-wide now (at ~168kbps its perfectly fine for email), EV-DO and EV-DV will up the speeds further, and then there's WiMax coming along with city-wide range for broadband. My hope is in a few years I'll just pay my garbage/sewer/WiMax utility and the roaming agreements will be between cities. Then I'll ditch the DSL and cell phone.
To solve all this stuff you need things to be addressed at multiple layers.
That's why the IEEE has started 802.21.
Evil people are out to get you.
Such systems should include the possibility of negotiating rates on the fly. The mobile device should be programmed with upper prices for particular levels of service. Then, for each unit of service purchased a negotiation takes place. If the ISP is not busy the price is low. If the ISP is close to saturation the price is high. If there are multiple ISPs to choose from market competition occurs as everyone negotiates to determine the price. This would result in a balance between coverage and what people are willing to pay.
I don't think the "free" roaming involves any agreements between cell phone providers, any more than "free" long distance involves an agreement to carry long distance calls at no charge. Your provider covers the costs you rack up on other networks, and passes them on to you in your monthly fee. All they have to do is figure out how much to charge monthly to make a profit.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
The city government in Atlanta has a very similar program called FastPass. The idea is to get hotels, restaurants,etc to provide wireless service independantly but connect to the FastPass service. Subscribers to the FastPass network then can access any one of those sites, including the airport, the convention center and several hotels. You can get an account by the hour, for several days, or as a monthly subscription. When a subscriber to the service logs onto a independently provided network, the provider gets a portion of the Fastpass connect fee, determined by the time spent on the network (or maybe bandwidth?) Seems like a winning idea to me. Wish more places would sign up to become a part of the network though.
harmonious design
When ATM's were first started up you could only use the one's from your bank with your card. After a few false starts things got a lot better.
You can't always expect a "new" technology to have all of the answers the moment it starts up.
Many of the wireless access providers complain about not making money. They don't understand I don't want to drive to Starbucks for access, I want it where ever I am (including at home) when I need it.
RAN
Most people's ISP won't let you send via their SMTP server unless you're connected via their servers. If you're roaming and connected via some third party ISP, you won't be able to send mail via thier SMTP server. This is already a problem for people using dialup roaming like iPass.
Will this perhaps cause a rise in authenticated SMTP (allowing people to send mail regardless of from where they're connected, while still addressing ISPs spam-control concerns)?
Do people have better solutions to SMTP while roaming??
Its more refined than that even,
In most circumstances, the big players have "peering" arrangements. Its the same for long distance, VoIP, Internet, etc.
Essentially there are only a few players that own significant bandwidth on the Internet and closed-switching systems. They build physical locations where the networks tie together and the big fat pipes interconnect (hence, the InterNetworking of the Internet). Here is where accounting of packets/data transferred takes place. In most cases the big players trade packets 1-for-1, meaning, if Spring and MCI send each other an equal amount of data no money changes hand (well, perhaps it does on paper to prop up "gross income" or whatever, but an equal amount is paid out).
Money is only gained by one provider or another when there is an imbalance.
The same principle will generally apply to phone carriers: Company A will trade minute for minute long-distance calls for Company B of a similiar nature. Only when there is an imbalance of A->B or B->A calls is significant charging taking place. This means that in real terms the largest portion of the cost is maintaining the internal networks and support of the infrastructure. External connectivity reaches a point of critical mass where the demand to communicate with an organizations customers generates fees that offset its own outgoing costs.
Hopefully the same thing will happen with big and small Wireless ISP's. User A from ISP A will use 40MB of ISP B's bandwidth but no money will have to change hands since User B from ISP B will end up using 40MB of ISP A's bandwidth. Some of the smaller WiSP's - say in rural areas or less traveled areas - will end up having to pay for an imbalance in, say, metropolitian Florida or New York or California, but in general, in many cases, the amount needed to expend to make this work financially isn't a huge barrier.
Over time the system is likely to become very smooth and automatic. Today calling long-distance triggers dozens of systems across a myraid of billing systems, but magically, somehow, the bills are *generally* accurate, the plans complex but manageable, and service universal reliable - even though there are nearly a half-dozen big long-distance companies out there.
I have an applescript for OS 9 that will speak the names of all unencrypted wireless nodes in the area and indicate good signal.
Slashdot does not let me post the code (BELIEVE ME I tried).
Email me if you with to play with it.
zavpublic at mac.com
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...