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Is WiFi Access Worth $10/hour?
Roland Piquepaille writes "This special report from CNET News.com carries an eloquent subtitle: 'Wireless expectations rose in 2003, but growth was hobbled by security concerns and unproven business models.' It's much worse than you think and I'm going to tell you why Wi-Fi will still not be broadly used in 2004 in this column. Technology columnists are usually looking at their own part of the world, in Silicon Valley or on the East Coast of the U.S. And obviously, their opinions are largely biased. Our world is much bigger than that. My arguments are based on real-world examples, both in Greece and in Paris. They're also based on costs of access. Paying $10 an hour for Wi-Fi access is almost twice as you pay for a movie. Would you pay $20 to see a movie? Probably not. So will you pay $10 to use a Wi-Fi connection for one hour? Certainly not."
perhaps, if the account that you pay for at StarBucks would at least allow for implementation of a RADIUS server and authentication by certificates, then perhaps the $10 and hour would be somewhat warranted. In the meantime, however, this just ends up being a factor of greed on the part of StarBucks and T-Mobile. Really, this should be a value adding benifit for the people who frequent StarBucks and pay $4 for a mocha not a service above and beyond the coffee.
Oh, and have you ever been to a hotspot and tried to get some information from the workers there? Not to be rude, as I'm sure that they are proficient at making a Latte, but would it hurt to at least tell them a couple things about wireless networks? Everytime I ask them anything, I get shrugs and answers such as "I don't know. They just have a guy come in and check on that [the access point] every now and then". Note, these are not complicated questions either. I ask if this is an A,B, or G network and the barista's eyes glaze over.
Oh well, at least free hotspots are much more plentiful in my hometown than the author of the article alludes to in France. Hey, word is they are even setting up the entire town next to me for a citywide WiFi network...
I pay about 2,5 USD an hour to sit at a computer and use the Internet, if they can charge that for access to a physical computer they can charge even less for WLAN-access...
perl -e'print$_{$_} for sort%_=`lynx -dump svanstrom.com/t`'
I don't see where they're getting these figures. If you drive around slowly enough, all you need for an hour of WiFi access is gas, at most $5
No I wouldn't, but several years ago when intenet access in Japan was a novelty a bar in my neighbourhood started offering internet access via a single PC on the bar top - cost Y1,000 per 30 minutes, which is give or take US$10 per 1/2 hour. People used it, but the bar eventually went bust. A bad business model? I'm sure people voting with their wallets will briing the price to a sensible level - everything's expensive at first.
Just my Y2 worth...
I really think that it's up to the people to start non-profits and provide free wi-fi access. Hell, the whole thing could easily be run via grants, donations and volunteer labor. Especially if people could come up with a good way to scale it horizontally.
Governments and corporations be damned, the world needs free internet access. Let's stop waiting for the beauracrats or the "market" to move society along. Let's do it ourselves.
I run a few hotspots around Minneapolis. The best practice I have found it allow people to buy chunks of time, allowing them to use this time whenever they are in the hotspot. Allowing people to buy 10 hours for $30.00, and letting them use it over the span of 3 months has worked well for me.
TruePunk | Games
There're enough people with open WiFi access points, why in hell would you pay for it?
Beyond that, here in Ottawa at least there are also a number of places with free WiFi access points as a draw for customers, like the 24 hour diner down the street from me.
Man, I would love if a place would just GIVE free WiFi. I'd take my laptop there and eat lunch there everyday. I'm sure lots of other people would as well. Charging for internet was OK at one time, but now it's just a bonus. Why pay $10/hr when I can come home and get it for $40/mo?
Jason Faulkner
Old Os Administrator
jason@oldos.org
oldos.
where I live, there are 5+ unencrypted unsecured WLANs at any place. why in hell should I pay even one cent?
If the RIAA can say that each "illegal" download costs them a zillion dollars... then surely WiFi ISPs can value their services for $10 an hour.
If you can download tens of songs per hour, a $10 investment in anonymous access is a steal! You can download hundreds of zillions worth of songs for that $10!
...these types of deals don't look so expensive.
:-)
hey, it's slower, but the coverage area makes up for that.
i tried it out on my last trip, works well. doesn't work so well from a moving car, though. (no, i wasn't driving
WiFi Hot-Spots in airports, cafes, etc. *beg* for pricing in a per-MB model.
$2 for the first megabyte (minimum $2) and $0.03 per additional megabyte...That way, people who go in and do a lot of work (downloading Linux ISOs, etc. over the corporate connection) pay more for it, and the people who use it to check their e-mail, pay almost nothing.
WiFi hotspots are one of the few places where a bandwidth-based billing model works.
... so the actual thrust of your complaint has to deal with the fact that, in places that aren't the United States, WiFi is traditionally charged for? And that the sums are not to your liking? Cry me a frickin' river.
WiFi adoption in 2004 will likely exceed expectations in the United States precisely because tons of free hot spots are coming up stateside! Take a look at Baltimore, which is attempting to wire up the entire Inner Harbor area into a gigantic, free hotspot. As for whether or not other international localities will follow suit, it's really up to them -- recall also though that gas prices tend to be higher in Europe as an example that infrastructure there does not equal infrastructure here.
Since the only argument that came out of the article was a long-winded whine about WiFi prices around the mediterranian, and had nothing to do with actual adoption of the technology in the coming year, I'd have been forced to mod it -1, Troll.
In a hotel in France, they wanted over $20 for 24h. WiFi aceess. Guess what? I said no thanks and used my modem to get my mail. That cost me about $1 for the hotel-overcharged local phone call.
But a hotel with free WiFi will get me renting their room.
And if I go into a cafe, I will choose one with free WiFi over the other one next door.
WiFi enabling a place like a cafe costs almost nothing. If they want to charge for the access, it costs much more to set up. That makes no sense. If I was a cafe or restaurant owner, I wouldn't hesitate a minute: buy a $100 (or less) access point, a router or firewall if it's not already there, hook it up to my existing ADSL or cable line, and let it be used for free and attract customers.
I will rather use a 1000mbps connection from Cogent, which is about $1000/month.
With this Wi-Fi, it is gonna cost:
10x (24x30)= $7200 a month!
I can't imagine paying for wi-fi in a public place. Here , in Albuquerque, there's plenty of public places like bars, restraunts and even a donut shop, that have free wireless. I can't see why somebody would pay $10 for -just- wireless when they could pay for food or a drink and get the wireless thrown in for free.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
also, how's the time-counting work? If I connect for 15 mins, do I get billed for 15 mins, .5 hrs, or 1 hr? It doesn't take long to download email or upload that powerpoint file.
So, is this the amount I can sue wardrivers/bandwidth thieves for when they hop onto my network?
$10/hr isn't too much if you're a corporate-type, assuming you can VPN into your corporate net and get your critical e-mail, calendar updates, etc, or just download the latest version of tomorrow's presentation.
Now there's probably cheaper options: cellphone-based (only 160KB for the best service out there), hotel-based broadband... but I'm sure the convenience wins out.
Now, I've never needed it, but if I had needed it, my boss wouldn't bat an eye on the expense account. The only problems with that? (1) there's no line item for that on the expense system, and (2) I no longer am employed by that company.
Design for Use, not Construction!
Ewan
Almost every independant coffee shop in my area offers free and open wireless. Just bring your laptop in, open it up, and you are on.
I live in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood and there are 2 places I know off within 2 blocks that offer this. And I've only lived in my current apartment for 2 weeks. I'm sure there are more that I haven't found yet.
1) get rid of most customers with high prices
2) increase prices to cover DSL costs;
3) remaining customers leave to competition
4) ???
5) profit.
I certainly wouldn't pay $10/hour if I were planning to be online for many hours. However, if I have a one hour layover in Chicago on a BOS->SFO flight, I might pay $10 to get online for that one hour. If you charge $10 for the first hour and $1 for subsequent hours, then you start making more sense.
- Old Man of the Mountain ---- "I want to disturb my neighbor"
Sound good? I think so too.
I fogot to add that even the grocery store/deli across the street from where I work has free wireless access.
It's very easy to find free and legal wireless access in Seattle. $10/hour is just crazy.
Why pay $10/hr when you can get it for free in many locations?
Perhaps in less urban areas where there is no competition, it is possible to charge $10 per hour.
But where I live, many places offer wireless as a free service to attract customers.
There are some places like that, at least around here.
Free RoadRunner cable, all you need is a WiFi card.
And they're intentionally giving you free internet too - it's not just some luser with an insecure network.
Nobody has found a right business model for Wi-Fi today.
Somebody imagined Sputnik some years ago, where volunteers/partners would run a self-contained router on their 802.11b-equipped computer, allowing access to roaming paying Sputnik customers, and receiving a share of the price of the connection time.
It was a brilliant idea : anybody and their dogs could run the Sputnik CD and make some money when Sputnik customers connected, and the Sputnik company could cover the country with wifi in no time thanks to people effectively "lending" their hardware to them. Only trouble was, for people who wanted to become Sputnik access points, it was akin to reselling some of their internet bandwidth to third parties, which is forbidden by most ISPs. I guess that's why today's Sputnik, Inc. seems to have abandoned the idea and reverted to being another boring AP manufacturer.
Too bad people don't have the right to do whatever they choose with the bandwidth they pay for, or that Sputnik didn't try to sweet-talk major ISPs into allowing this in return for a cut of the pie, we'd have fantastic wifi coverage with this today otherwise.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
$10 / hour makes it somewhat like those phones in planes, really only useful for people who have corporations to pay for their expenses.
So I imagine this will take off in downtown sections of major urban areas and in airports, but aside from that, the general public won't be interested until they have some reasonable, flat monthly fee (probably at or just slightly above current broadband charges, or as an addition to existing broadband service), which increasingly seems to be the only way people will pay for access services of any kind.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
There was a time when air conditioning was not universal. Places of business advertised and promoted the fact that their place of business was air conditioned and they managed the burden of the increased cost of air conditioning in order to attract customers.
WiFi will follow the same trajectory. Wise businesses like restaurants and coffee shops will just provide it like air conditioning and leverage the log-on portal for advertising. I think it will be likely that they will filter on mac addressess and quota traffic over ports like tcp25 to prevent abuse, but eventually they will provide it for free. It will become the new air conditioning--the mark of a savvy service business.
Until then, people will try to charge for it. The main problem with that is the variety of needs that customers will have. Some need it a lot, some need it once a year. Some just prefer to have it, some can't live without it. How do you price-model that?
You don't.
It's the new utility. Figure it into your overhead.
The best way to do is to be.
"Paying $10 an hour for Wi-Fi access is almost twice as you pay for a movie."
I'm sorry, but I don't see the relevance of comparing movies to internet access. Keep reading...
"Is this an incentive to cross Paris, carrying your laptop, to meet a friend in a Wi-Fi connected cafe? I don't think so. As long as prices will remain that high, the utilization will remain very low. And of course, nobody will make money... As long as prices will remain that high, the utilization will remain very low. And of course, nobody will make money."
I'm impressed with the short-sightedness of this guy's comment. Does he know anything about business? Economics? Everything starts off expensive and gets CHEAPER as time goes by, customers get used to the idea, and competition settles in. These services that run $6-$10 are NOT aimed to him, the causual user. They are for the business traveller. $10 to get on the net, wirelessly, at broadband speeds for an hour is reasonable, especially when it's expensible. If you can business expense it, it means you're paying $10 to be productive.
How long will this pricing be in effect? Well, for one, they need to recoup their expenses. So the early adopters (the ones who'll really benefit from this service even if it is a bit pricey) will cover that. Then, over time, prices will go down, and if the service is popular, they'll expand their capacity. By then, the expenses of running that service will go down. And, perhaps, another business will be built on a similar service, and provide a little competition, causing services to go cheaper/better.
It's as simple as that. Just about every technology service has worked that way. So what does this have to do with the price of a movie ticket? Nothing! This isn't an hour of entertainment, it's an hour of business dependent service. Prices don't stay at a constant level unless you're selling music CDs.
"Derp de derp."
Is that simply it's current deployments are poor. Who want's to go to McDonalds where the food is usually greasy and get your laptop all greasy? Who wants to go to starbucks and sit in a cramped, high traffic area to try and get some work done? Then you factor in privacy issues and it's just not worth it. It doesn't mean that WiFi isn't deployable it just means that it takes more than just declaring "WiFi Hotspot" on some cup somewhere.
I'm not an everyday joe so I won't pretend to speak for them. However, I find it disturbing that in NYC I can't find a place to sit down and use my laptop on the internet. The WiFi is there it's just that the spots are simply uncomfortable, and or as this story shows cost large sums of money. There are many others like me who would like to just simply sit down and use their laptop and maybe get a cup of coffee. Wrap the cost into the coffee if need be.. I don't want to worry about paying, or metered usage.
This is where I think some of the Mom/Pops can win back some of their business lost to places like Starbucks. I'd be more willing to hit a Mom and Pop that has less traffic, more room and WiFI access. Also, with the number of people working out of the office nowadays it only makes sense. Make my environment comfortable and let me sit there and buy coffee and food all day while I get some school/work done. It's really a win win situation, you get repeat customers, who most likely have friends, who will most likely end up hanging out in your place actually buying stuff all day while they hang out and get work done. I mean the possibilities are endless, if someone was really smart they'd start a chain of these things and market it to people like me, a college student/work person on the go. If I wasn't broke i'd open my own.
My Girlfriend works at a place that provides WiFi access for about that price. If I was looking to do some downloading without the MPAA or RIAA knowing who I was, it would be worth it. I can download 10 CDs worth of music in an hour. I can download 2 or 3 movies in an hour.
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
if you ask me, wi-fi should be community-based. set up access-points at intersections, and charge for that. i would like to see the ppl on the block be charged the bill - that way, everyone gets a nominal (almost negligible for anyone to crib about) amount to pay, and connectivity for everyone everywhere.
...
im thinking from a city-wide point of view, and i dont see why it wouldnt work outside of it.
i dont wanna see a business model, i want someone taking the initiative to get ppl connected. get the business ppl involved with all their "business model" mumbo-jumbo, and just see things get messed up.
also, we cannot think about deploying massive wi-fi grids by thinking of charginf individuals separately. its not a wired connection coming into the home, and hence
so, communit-based service with everyone footing the very nominal bill of setting up access-points at strategic locatons.
Last week's Economist had a very interesting article comparing early European coffee-houses to today's Internet.
One of their points was that while hotspots in cafes are a good idea, it's unlikely they will make anyone a lot of money, since in places where there is competition among coffee houses, a proprietor would likely give away the access just like they buy magazines and don't charge the customers to read them.
Put another way, I can set up good wireless in my urban cafe for less than a hundred bucks a month. It won't take me long to figure out that I can sell a lot more $3 coffees by giving it away.
Especially if the Giant Faceless Corporation down the street is charging people ten bucks an hour for the same thing.
The article is titled "the Internet in a cup" and is available on the paid section of the economist online: link.
But then, you could probably drop down to the cafe and read it for free...
This Like That - fun with words!
Currently Internet in Russia is expensive:
Dialup: $0.30 to $1.00 per hour
DSL: $30 to $100 per 1Gb
The $10/hour WiFi is not that expensive by Russian standards
People are willing to use iPass which allows them to dial in with a local call around the world for ~$2.50 an hour depending on where they are located. The option of just getting an AOL Account which would provide about the samething for ~$22 a month. They now are offering Wifi. A comparision would be this for $10 an hour vs. $40 for Boingo service. I think people are willing to pay if they are not aware or don't want to deal with alternatives.
Sun Prairie: The Sun Prairie Water & Light utility is providing wireless Internet service and also has hooked up a few businesses directly to its high-speed fiber-optic system. Customers served total about 450.
3 .php
Residential customers are charged $30 a month and there is a $50 installation fee.
http://www.madison.com/captimes/news/stories/6403
So, will people pay. To begin with, some are going to pay a minute or hourly fee to have a connected laptop. The convenience is worth the money. The fact that people bought telegraphs, land lines, beepers, cell phones, and net connections when the costs were astronomical attest to this fact. These connection were not available to everyone, nor did base charges allow you to connect to or from a place outside your local area. However, in the current climate, people do expect cheap connections that work everywhere. Given this, will the market be large enough to support WiFi access points. I would agree with you that it is probably not the case.
So, what is the answer. Movie theaters. Contract with the proprietors of coffee houses, book stores, airports, anywhere that people se laptops. The proprietor can offer access free to customers, or with a per minute charge. This is already being done, but needs to be pushed a no or low cost solution to these establishments. This might provide enough money if every laptop is WiFi capable.
And this means that most laptops must come with WiFi connections just like most desktops come with network and modem connections. If it cost $150 and requires you to muck around the systems setting to get WiFi, most people will not do it. they will say it is not worth the trouble for the few hours a week they might use it. But if the laptop is already set up, and they may choose to go to a place with WiFi connections, and spend the $5 for a half hour in addition to their $5 for coffee.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
The coffee shop I hang out in Fort Collins CO offers free wireless. The cost of their setup was fairly minimal and the fact that people bring their own computers means that the sink nothing into having their own computers available.
They make their money by attracting people and selling them things. They aren't in the ISP business. Wireless is just another item along the same lines as a couch or table to make the place comfortable.
Has no one really looked at the total dichotomy of McDonald's and Starbuck's trying to do this? McDonald's is a fast food restaurant where they have spent tens of thousands of hours of designing a restaurant based upon throughput. The chairs are uncomfortable. The color scheme is not a good long term colorscheme. The designers wanted people to stay approximately 15 minutes and then leave.
Starbucks is not much better, from the ones I have seen. It is also based upon getting people through the line and out of the store.
Then add in that they are making a huge capital investment in an area outside their expertise at the corporate level. I don't know the details for this, but I suspect that the corporate headquarters is driving the architecture design and signing a lot of very large contracts for IT from 3rd party vendors. Looking at the local coffee shop here, I see about $200 in equipment a 20GB DSL at $55 a month (metered above that, but I do not know the rate. They purchased the DSL connection at it's yearly rate of $600). It's a total investment of around $1000.
So..
*NO*
It's not worth $10 an hour. That coffee shop considers it more time and effort than it is to hire someone to track what is a marginal expense in their yearly budget. Hardware is cheap. Setting it up and occassionally fixing it is cheap. Headcount to add accounts and manage accounts is expensive as it having enough equipment to maintain those accounts. They aren't an ISP. They're a coffee shop. They sell coffee.
DSL: $30 to $100 per 1Gb
In Soviet Russia, broadband ISPs abuse YOU!
...so the taxes probably quadruple the price.
But I'm sure there are some that will pay. Like say you are the head network badass for a web hosting company. There are other people on staff to do support, but you are to go guy that knows the whole system and can fix any problem. This might be something your company would have you signed up for, along with data on your cell to make sure that even if you are on vacation or something you can get at the routers if need be. Expesnive, but not as expensive as a disaster taking out their bussiness. In time it'll get cheaper, and you'll see more adoptions (or it will die out and be replaced by something else).
We're already seeing this with data on cellphones. Alltel said they could hook my up with something like 400 minutes of data time (144k where available) for like $40/month. Well that's not worth it to me, I mean the speed isn't that great and I'd burn through those minutes in a hurry. More worth it ot just find a network jack or access port (not hard in my job). However, there are plenty of people who I could see that as being appealing to. It's also much cheaper than what they used to offer. I'm sure in time it'll come down even more. If it starts looking like $10-$20 for 500+ minutes, I'll probably add it to my plan for when I'm out and about and as a backup is the DSL dies.
Wireless access is very likely to follow the same pattern as wired access, eventually ending up as something that is quite affordable to most people that want it. However it's new and being developed now so the costs are currently going to be high. Even so, they'll see people that use it.
As a different example take international cell phone roaming. It's something that's only receantly been possible since the providers got together. Even more receantly in the US since we only just got GSM. However, it now is possible. You can get an AT&T cellphone and places and recieve calls on one number in New York, Tokyo, London, Sydney and so on. So, what does it cost to do this? Well first you have to have a cell plan and minutes. It uses minutes as normal and has the normal overusage fees. Then there is the long distance cost (since you are usually calling long distance). Tends to be from $0.30-$1.00 per minut depending on where from and to. Then there is the international roaming fee. $1 per minute. So if you are in London calling the US you are spending somewhere around $1.30/minute plus using your minutes. Ouch
However, people use it. Both my dad and his boss have AT&T GSM phones for just that reason. They find that the convienence of being reachable at a single number anywhere in the world outweighs the costs. In time, it will go down, and the same with wireless data.
For general wandering on the net paying that kind of money doesn't make sense, but for anyone travelling around, it could well.
If the charge increment is less than a full hour, a 15 minute block would cost $2.50. I'd happily pay that. My laptop could suck down my mail, upload off-line written mails and still let me check a few news sites, all for $2.50.
Sure, I'd rather pay $5 an hour or less, but these things do cost, and the mentality of "the net must be free!" really can't go on forever. What I'm hoping for are *reasonable* charges for things in the future.
Anyone who uses the net for anything related to a business use shouldn't see an hourly cost as being bad. At $10/hr they might not see as much use as $5/hr, and if thats the case then the market place is going to the give propriators a whack on their heads, won't it.
In my case, I'd likely use a $5/hr system several times more than a $10/hr system, but if I'm in Podunk nowhere $2.50 for 15 minutes isn't going to seem too bad.
Out here in the UK, BT charges 15/hour for an hour of 802.11b connectivity for their "OpenZone" service. They cite Microsoft Windows as a system requirement but you can get connectivity in Linux using IP-over-DNS, with the added benefit that it's absolutely free. I'd probably have willing to pay a reasonable amount for their service, but as long as they refuse to support Linux, people are just going to continue to freeload with IP-over-DNS.
I'm curious about availability at major universities. Here at the University of Central Florida we have free access in most of the newer buildings and several outdoor areas. The coverage is growing and notable currently covered areas include the bookstore (which is run by Barnes and Noble and has the obligatory Starbucks), the Math and Physics building, the Student Union (along with areas surrouding it) and Engineering. Do other schools have widespread access for students and faculty?
Daniel
Aerospace Engineering major
Planetes
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promo Ad
"Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer" - Adolf Hitl
Living in a small town with no broadband or wifi :) In larger towns where there is
access, it might make sense for someone to charge
$10/hr to set up a wap. Personally, I'd rather
see a price of $5/hr or something like that. Having
the wap would be nice so one can download large
files you can't get on dialup (such as windows patches for everybody
else but me
plenty of broadband connections or free wap, it probably
makes very little sense though.
Sheesh when I first heard about hotspots I grabbed my wife and started searching don't know about you but that'd be the only hotspot I would be willing to dish out $10 an hour for. Luckily I'm married so the going rate is waived for me ;)
MoFscker
As long as
-I could bring in outside food & drink if I wanted, without having to smuggle it in under my coat.
-there were trailers for upcoming movies, but NO GODDAMN COMMERCIALS for ANYTHING ELSE. No contests, no movie tie-ins, not even the damn Jimmy Fund.
<rant>
I swear, if I have to sit through that fucking Coca-Cola "Talking About Fame" spot one more time I'm going to go crazy. If I wasn't already a Pepsi drinker, I would switch. That's how much I hate that fucking ad. Annoying commercials inspire me to give the advertiser's nearest competitor my business.
</rant>
One of the most efficient deployments, in terms of billing, is as a loss leader. By this I mean where you deploy it for free, with the hopes that the increase in traffic (foot traffic) will more than make up for the cost. This model works for coffee shops, hotels, some restaurants, and perhaps even housing or office complexes.
Example (and shameless plug):
I have set up just such a network in the plaza where my office is located, Lake Anne (in Reston, Virginia). We have a T1, and have wired up four of the restaurants with access points. We are using 802.11b, no encryption, no signups, just come out and connect. The restaurants pay us for the access and to maintain the equipment, which goes a long way to defraying to cost of the T1. The restaurants have "WiFi Zone" stickers in the windows, and we are trying to get some local press coverage.
Most days, I see at least a few people with their laptops in the various restuarants (one of them is, in fact, a coffee shop). I can hardly wait for the spring, since the access extends to the benches surrounding the dock (the plaza is at one end of a small lake).
For the curious, we use a combination of Netgear wireless routers, Apple Airport Extremes, and a FreeBSD gateway/firewall (with a Sangoma T1 adapter in it-- no router necessary). Our F.A.Q. (a work in progress) covers the most common questions people have to hook up, and the restaurants all have a printout of it just in case . The best part is, it works!
You said WiFi... I thought you said Wifey ... my bad
MoFscker
I understand hotspots in places like Airports and other such places where people need to do business on the go, but it seems like too much we are too hard to "disconnect" and look up. Leave the computer at home when you go out to lunch or to starbucks for coffee. We're all in favor of jumping into a chat room to talk to people hundreds of miles away, but we don't show the same enthusiasm for chatting with people around us. Don't get me wrong, having net access is fun, but meeting the people around you and checking out the real world is even more fun. Just my two cents.
I'd rather put my balls in a vice than pay $10/hr for Wi-Fi access. Fucking tards!
Well, around me it is $9-$10 for a single movie ticket, and that is considered cheap compared to Philly and NYC. I have seen $14 theaters in Philly. (I am in NJ, ten minutes from Philly)
Dinner and a movie will end up being a $100 for the night if you go anywhere but MacDonalds and Blockbuster.
Fear Is the Only God
There is no way in hell WiFi can offer the same entertainment value.
Strap a WiFi unit to a burly pooch's back and let him loose? You have just made me a very rich man.
The bigger question is whether Rob Malda's wife is worth $10/hour.
That answer is no.
I'll make you scream, girly-man!
They dont provide a client for my chosen OS, donno about those 'ipass' type of cards..
I have seen them in truckstops, but never bothered to get one. ( try asking for details, no one in the station knows diddly about them )
Howevere there are other large ISPs, that have local access numbers in most big cities...
Then all you have to do is VPN back home.. and you are set. ( and secure )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
LOL, I wish my GPRS service was that fast ;)
;P
In theory, GPRS is capable of speeds up to 172kbps... but, in practice, you're likely to get 28.8kbps or worse.
GPRS and voice data share the same network, and, for GPRS to achieve its maximum speed it needs to usurp all 8 available timeslots (without any error correction). Since you share these timeslots with others in your area, and mobile providers typically give precedence to voice data (esp. during peak hours), you're not at all likely to get faster-than-modem speeds from GPRS.
I still for over the $50/mo. for it, but, I'm pretty much shellbound, rediscovering why lynx(1) was so popular (and why w3m(1) is now)
ticket for The Last Samurai - $3
Chile Picante Cornuts and OJ from the Exxon next door - $2
Being able to see a movie in total comfort, the best seat in the house, only one other person watching the movie, no screaming kids around, and cheap outside snacks - priceless
Ok, a couple of things. /OT)
/hour for internet access. It might of have sounded good in a board room, but it's the wrong way to think. Let me explain.
1. Community groups have essentially killed the market in a lot of cities. If someone can get it free, they won't pay. These are legitimate organizations, many federal non-profits - regardless of what Dvorak might think.
www.personaltelco.net is quite active in Portland, OR. If I were to step out on a limb, I would say that any corp wanting to unwire the downtown area would fail because of the personaltelco nodes that are already active.
(now some 12 year old nUb will "hack" the ptp wiki and brag about it on some irc channel, grr
2. The "linksys community network", ssid = default, no wep, etc. Whatever. Basically, it's free and the "pay for" model isn't. Besides. A lot of users would just go "wow, [mah emahil | AIM] is working" and be happy.
3. Starbucks/Tmobile et al think "profit" as charging $X
Most "regulars" (read "the majority of people who will buy stuff from you") will migrate to free wifi if that is what they are looking for. You can still hook in the occasional out of towner BUT they aren't your bread and butter.
And just to make this even more simplistic and understandable.
What do you sell in a coffee shop? Yes. Coffee.
Do you make a profit on coffee? Yes. I hope so, at $5 for a cup of crappy burnt beans.
If you give a reason for people to stay, will they buy more coffee (remember, you make a profit on coffee)? Yes. They will.
Will this increase your profits? Yeah. Of course.
Some companies realize this - and also realize that if you want to force people to get access with a purchase, that is pretty easy too. I think it's "buy a big mac, get net access" in McDonalds right now. They realize how they can make this profitable (although IMHO, the location is kind of wrong, sort of like selling mayonaise in a sex shop, but then again I haven't been to a McDonalds in 5 years)
Sure there is a niche market in airports and the such, but the average business isn't in an airport, is it?
Starbucks should be paying tmobile etc for the amount of time customers spend online, not the other way around.
4. If a company that offers wireless internet is not profitable, it is because of piss poor management and pissing away of company funds on stuff not essential to the business.
An access point costs roughly $200 to implement (an AP, a nocat box, or running some other authentication/payment scheme) and the man hours to install it. After that, $90 a month charge for the DSL/cable. Probably less than that.
When an AP is so cheap to implement, it is kind of hard to not make a profit even using these "pay" services.
BTW, the guy who runs www.seattlewireless.com is a scumbag who "resells" free services and IMHO should be dragged into the street, shot and hung from a lamp post. He's using the name of the community organization that sets up free nodes and making money for stealing nodedb's and mapquest's maps.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
There is no way in hell strippers can offer the same entertainment/pleasure value.
Lets say the hotspot you're in has 54Mbps, straight to it's ISP's NNTP server.
That's 6.75 MB give or take per second from a news server. An average 1 disc xvid movie is ~700MB. You could download a movie from newsgroups in 104 seconds that way...
That's just about 34 movies per hour.
...
WOOHOO! WHO NEEDS A THEATRE!?
Oh, that's illegal. Don't do that, nevermind.
I recently stayed at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Washington D.C; They've got a nice gig going of charging $10 (or was it 15? I can't remember) for 15 minutes of wired access. Of course, staying there for 4 days, I had no real choice but to connect at least once.
Classic example of "the customer has no choice, so he'll pay whatever we charge."
--
http://nemilar.net - Not your grandmother's soup kitchen
Wardriving is free, or even profitable if you locate the server, knock on their door, and ask for consulting fees to secure their wireless router.
Mod "Overrated" instead of replying "I disagree with you," you coward.
Why? Just go in and look at the clientel. On average, the people buying Big Macs aren't the people who could find their way around a WEP key. The only ones who hang around long enough are the bums who need a place to sit before going out to score their next quart of Colt 45, and the elderly pensioners who need 20 minutes to get the strength to shuffle back out to their land barges. Once in a while some gang bangers will stay around, but ther're more interested in being menaces, not checking up on Slashdot.
Very true, and the same applies to employees. This is a great example of how the market continually refines itself to the needs of customers and employees, in addition to business owners. No force (government) was necessary to make this happen -- the business owners simply determined that it was in their best interest to cater to the needs of customers and employees.
I can connect to 4 APs from my downtown office and I don't have one myself.
One of those belongs to a restaurant for their patrons and I eat there frequently, so I am a patron - the others are other businesses in the building with open APs on the outside of their firewalls.
Nuff sed.
WiFi is worth $10 per hour if I'm at a hotel and I only have an hour before I head to a conference or meeting and I need to check my e-mail. To compare it to the cost of a movie is silly; of course very few people are going to pay $10 to surf the web for fun, but for business travelers on the go, it may be perfectly acceptable to pay $10 an hour plus to get on the net on their own laptop. That being said, companies have to make a choice. They can either market themselves as a business solution and charge $10 per hour, in which case they ought to be providing high bandwidth, high reliability service with excellent support, or they can offer a crappy service for less money which will attract people who are just looking to kill time or surf for fun. The point is this: there are plenty of situations where I'd be willing to pay $10 for an hour's use of WiFi. There are tons of other situations where that's not for me, in which case the people who do need the service will be happy to not have me stealing their bandwidth.
No.
My wife and I won a cruise (!) this last past year, in October, to the western carribean. On the ship, internet access was 50 cents a minute (!) but while we were in Jamaica, I wanted to say hi to some friends. There was this outdoor bar in Ochos Rios with about 6 machines setup... I think I paid $2.50 for 15 mins, which figures out to the $10/hr rate. I thought it was fair. I guess it depends on what you wanna do... I hopped on IRC, instant messenger, said hey to some friends (most were working anyhow!) and checked webmail, and of course, slashdot.
So I guess my point is, sure, why not? I paid close to the $10/hr rate for *wired* access, it would be fair enough for wireless. Also, most of the places I can think of getting online away from home (airports, hotels, etc) why would someone want to be online for a few hours? Unless you're addicted to Everquest or something...
FLR
In the early days of Cell Phones, just after the earth cooled, the monthly fee included a whole 30 minutes of air time. Roaming cost a buck a minute and service was spotty.
The day will come when a few bucks a month will get you more wireless access than you can possibly use.
New stuff is always expensive. In a competitive environment, prices come down to cost plus a small profit margin. If you want to project the price of wireless access in a few years, figure out how much it will cost (hardware, labor, capital) for an efficient vendor to supply it, add a little for profit and you'll be genius.
Maybe I'm going out on a limb here, but I view wireless (802.11 any) as a temporary technology in public spaces. A few problems:
1) There is no roaming built in. When I leave Starbucks and go to another AP, then I have to make a new connection. Compare this to mobile phones which switch base stations automatically
2) It's flakey. I come across about 1 AP in 10 that refuses to play with my card. This isn't good enough for a "consumer" technology
3) The business model doesn't stack up. Running a secure AP costs money - and you'd be surprised at how small existing corporate net connections are at retail outlets
4) The billing is all broken. Can you imagine submitting an expense claim for loads of different wirless outlets? Too hard.
Like Ewan, I have a GPRS card. Mine is Vodafone (UK). I generally connect at 36 Kbps, which is enough for email. With corporate discounts, I have never paid more than GBP 15 a month, and I am a pretty heavy user.
GPRS is nothing compared to 3G, and 3G coverage is starting to become decent in the UK. 3G can hit 2 Mbit under ideal conditions - but 512K is more usual. It will take a year or two to iron out the technical kinks in 3G - but by, say 2005/6 the UK will have ubiquitous coverage. When this is in place, wireless hotspots will be viewed as interesting museum pieces. (No idea what the 3G equivalent is in the States, so YMMV).
Note - my rant (!) is only about public WiFi. WiFi is great in the office - but that is as far as it goes...
Like when I worked at a newspaper. I was technically the webmaster but also the go guy for all computer problems. Also, I was one of the few people that could properly work Quark and all the printers (just the editor, layout people, and me, the reporters didn't know how). So because of this, I was on call 24/7. I always had a cellphone, pager and landline next to my bed. There were times when I got called in at odd hours too.
Something like this can be extended even further. I know people who, even when on vacation need to be reachable. It's part of what they get paid for (and they get paid well because of it). Not everyone is willing to put up with that, not sure I am anymore, but if it IS part of your job, technology to keep you connected is of great intrest.
You have to pay for WiFi access?
Here in Toronto you can get free wireless access almost any where. In all the apartment buildings I go into I can get a signal, almost anywhere downtown except for in the subway, and even in many very unexpected places such as my grandparents out in the suburbs.
Is that you are totally ignoring the market.
Being able to do work and get email (low bandwidth stuff) is MORE valueable to the majority of business people who would use the service than the spare time to grab an ISO is to some geek...
Making 90% of your customers pay almost nothing is a good way to not make any money.
City Market? Or another Market/Deli? I love Bauhaus for the wifi, and the greatest coffee in Seattle.
If you use more than 3-4 hours a month, just sign up to be a monthly subscriber. If you're a T-Mobile wireless subscriber, it's only $29.99 a month... That's a buck a day for T1 speed. It's $39.99 if you're new to T-Mobile, which is still a great deal. Of course you pay more as you go--just look at pre-paid cell phones. The advantage is you *can* just use an hour or two.
Seriously... if you're in any major metro area, chances are you're within a few hundred feet of half a dozen open APs. What's the point of paying $10 an hour for something that's free?
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Hi,
:-) -- since I object to TMobile's usurious pricing of their service at $30 for non-users of TMobile cell phones.
;-)
I'm in Downtown Bellevue.... where is it free around here? (I'm thinking that free wifi may be available in the city of Seattle itself, but that it's harder to find out in the suburbs....)
I currently pay $11.95/month for the cometa alternative to TMobile which gets me in at Bell Square and Barnes and Noble (and the Starbucks attached to it
I would of course rather pay $0.
Take a look at Baltimore, which is attempting to wire up the entire Inner Harbor area into a gigantic, free hotspot.
Baltimore hasn't had the best of luck with their efforts so far, at least according to this article in the baltimore sun which calls it spotty at best. I live in Baltimore, but haven't really had a reason to try it out so far.
Ironically, well before Starbucks started offering paid access, a local coffee shop near my college was offering free wireless access. The place recently changed hands, and I'm not positive that it still does, but it would seem that free access might prove a better business model for small/independent places trying to have something different than the big boys.
I have blog like everyone else
It's a lot cheaper for a bar or restaurant to provide free WiFi than to subscribe to a commercial cable TV or satellite sports provider, but I've never had the owner of a sports bar try to charge me to watch a Bucs game.
Sometimes I like to go to a bar to watch games that aren't being shown where I live; I'm not such a big fan that I want to watch out-of-area teams often enough to pay for one of those expensive "sports pass" satellite deals, and besides, it's often nice to sit with other people who enjoy the game instead of with my wife, who leaves the room when I put on a football game and barely tolerates baseball.
Obvously bar owners figure sports TV is worth the cost. There's no question that it brings in business -- including mine now and then. I'm not sure enough people have wireless-equipped laptops or PDAs for free wireless to pay off quite yet in most parts of the world for establishments that put it in, but that day will come.
I said all of this in a NewsForge article last May, BTW.
- Robin
Grrrr.. I'm green with envy.. I live in Las Vegas, NV and we only just a few months ago got -one- coffee house here with free wifi.. Of course, we've had most of the local Starbucks available with tmobile access for quite a while. The coffeehouse is right across the street from the University of Nevada/Las Vegas and at most times of the day, there's 3-4 people there with laptops..There's also a Starbucks/tmobile ap maybe 200 ft from the coffee house, and of course the tmobile ap comes blasting in, and of course winxp wants to grab the tmobile signal instead of the free ap.. Oh well..
The article misses one vital point. For-fee WiFi may not take off, but the free version looks like it has a much more user-friendly charging structure.
:v)
Start off by creating your own WiFi-enabled communities and nuture them until they interlink. I have developed a way of making it "worth their while" for members of outlying communities to join a WiFi network:
Most rural communities suffer badly from sub-standard dial-up access. ISP conditions forbid the sharing of accounts, but once you've downloaded a page, you can share it with anyone over WiFi. This is the principle of the "Community Proxy" system. Its free, and speeds up access for everyone.
Once community WiFi networks grow to a point where they start to encompass locally hosted websites and establishments like schools, community centres and so forth, local content becomes a big driver on its own. As the zones link up, more and more traffic goes over WiFi and less down cables. The community has regained control of the Internet.
Vik
The question is to whom.
If I'm in the airport on business, and I can have complete access to my email, the web and the company's VPN - then its worth a lot more than $10 an hour. My company will cheerfully pay $0 for an extra hour of my time. If I'm on a consulting gig then I can bill for an extra hour of work. Its a no brainer.
For friends who do primarily consulting work and don't maintain an office, $10 an hour isn't a bad price to pay for a place to sit, work, have a cup of coffee and use have high speed internet access. I can't quite see McDonalds as a player, but Starbucks certainly is.
On the other hand, would I pay an extra $10 along with my $1.50 for a coffee so that I could surf the net -- just 'cuz I happened to have my notebook with me? Of course not.
Don't compare net access to entertainment - its a utility and its value can be substantially higher, or lower, depending on the individual's needs.
+--------------------- You idiot! I told you we were facing the wrong way!
Ok, so you go into the shop, get a $5 cup of coffee. Letsay the avg person spends 15-30 minutes in the store actually drinking it.
If a person spends an hour or so at the store, how many of them actually buy a second cup? At the local starbucks (sanjose), there's always a crowd outfront in the evenings. They're there every friday/saturday night, from dusk till dawn it seems.
If you put in Wi-Fi, do you think the people will buy 2-3 cups of coffee for the 2-3hrs they may spend online?
It all comes down to $$/hr. Either $10/hr (for 1cup every 30minutes) or 1hr online (at $10/hr).
I personally wouldn't want people buying one cup of coffee and then surfing the web for free over the span of 2hours. Its like 'window shopping', but in this case your in my shop with no intention of buying (other than a 'token' cup). Or possibly no cup at all.
I just signed on for T-Mobile $19.99/month unlimited internet. Hook the cell up to the TiBook via USB and connect at about 56k anywhere there's GSM service. For me this is a great solution for occasional travel. Accessing the internet ON the cellphone is a joke, but THROUGH the cellphone on my laptop is great!
----- Indecision is the key to flexibility.
I go to a cafe about 15 minutes from my house where I get free wireless Internet access. It's a single shared DSL, and it's not speeding fast, but I have cable-modem for that at home. I drive past about 10 places with pay-for-access WiFi on my way to this cafe. While I'm there, I always end up buying a bagel or muffin and a coffee or three. This is a business model that works. Charging for access doesn't work, and never will unless the cost is much lower than it is and the service signifcantly better than you can get from a free provider.
Nearly every client of mine that has set up Wi-Fi in their homes has been disappointed. The ranges drop precipitously indoors, and are far less than what the manufacturers claim. When they are about to get a broadband connection, I tell them I know a guy who does data wiring at a reasonable rate.
Ok, so I haven't shaved today, either, but I did write up a little Cool Use For Perl on PerlMonks called Expresso Login.
If you've been to Starbucks or Borders Books in Southern CA or South Texas, you very well may have seen me.
I recommend Borders -- especially if you ever need a reference book while working...just walk over and get one, bring it back, sip Latte, work/surf, and enjoy.
The only problem I've had was the onset of Christmas music prior to Thanksgiving weekend (!).
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
I have a cell phone plan that doesn't limit data access at all.
Sprint has an 'unlimited vision' plan added to my phone, and I get internet through their network. The speed isn't so bad, and it is even better if you have extra image compression (done on sprint's side to minimize image file sizes, which bothers some, but can be turned off). I only travel to large-ish cities and haven't really run into an area without their 'vision' (3G isn't it?) service.
Because nothing I need is very latency specific, I have often considered killing my cable modem. The cell phone cable was $5 from eBay (go look, USB cables for any phone can be had for next to nothing), connects to my USB port, I dial #777 with my phone authenticating my account (no user/pass).
-bortbox
I will respond to this like I respond to companies and web sites. It has absolutly zero to do with generating profit and 100% to do with advertizing. Your web master should be beholden to your Advertizing VP and you should think of your $$$ spent of web site development as advertising. Lets face it, for darn near everyone these days - if you need a product what do you do?? Google it. Plain and simple. Spend money on TV, the paper, mags ....and the web - but relize the web is becoming your "street side" display
-
-
Back on topic - this is just another form of advertizing. Airports charge an obscene amount of money to tap into the net. Why? I really don't know. I rank it up there with bathrooms, carpet on the floor, and poorly padded chairs. Why should they provide it for free? Cuz most business travelers would prefer it to peanuts in flight - and cost wise it just might me less.
No, I am not saying drop ads into the web feeds - I am saying it is it's own form of advertizing - treat it that way and you will be a much happier business (Hey Phil - new numbers out today - people prefer AmeriAir cuz we have 802.11g!
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
I've noticed a lot of generally negative reaction to Roland's blog entries that are often on Slashdot, primarily due to his shameless self-promotion and some high-noise/low-content posts. The funniest reply I have ever seen to Roland Piquepaille is over at John Wiseman's lemondor . Read the Comments thread. Now to address some of the points in one of Roland's typical posts:
Roland: why don't you just tell us the main thrust of your blog entry? That's the whole idea of the Slashdot SUMMARY. It's obvious from your many posts all over the place (not just Slashdot -- although we now know at least 60% of your traffic comes from here) that you are constantly trying to drive traffic to your blog. Anyone who is interested in what you have to say will click through anyway, so why not just call it what it is? Your BLOG.
Roland can compare himself to technology columnists instead of bloggers if he likes, but how does Roland's obviously biased opinion in his obviously biased blog entry make him any different from the people he criticizes and accuses of geographic bias?
Roland may not be aware of it, but Silicon Valley is 3000 miles (that's about 4800 kilometres) from the US East Coast. They are part of the same country but they are also distinct geographic regions. And they are no less "real-world" than Roland's home (France) and favorite vacation spot(?) (Greece). Roland's geographic bias and the implicit superiority of his argument smacks of snobbery.
If that's his argument, I have to agree with Wingchild's assessment of Roland's post as nothing more than self-indulgent whining.
Since Roland is someone who used to work in the technology industry he should know that any new technology will have its growing pains, especially when it is adopted at a rapid pace. Roland's bias does not make the rapid growth of wireless networking any less explosive or disruptive, and we will probably see accelerating adoption of wireless networking everywhere -- not just in North America, but in developing and impoverished parts of the world that lack a vast wireline infrastructure to support a traditional Internet/telecom environment. The low cost and rapid ease-of-deployment make wireless networks an obvious choice for these regions.
Europe has always had a pay-per-use model. For example, it is the dominant model for mobile phone use in Europe. It was the dominant model for Internet access (is it still? I haven't checked lately). Flat-rate pricing is the dominant model in North America. Internet and mobile phone packages all started out as pay-per-use but are now dominated by flat-fee pricing. It is a cultural difference.
If the culture is something Roland dislikes so intensely, Roland can:
Is Wi-Fi access worth $10/hour? That depends on how much you need it. Especially to business users, the convenience of fast, reliable wireless Internet access may be worth every penny.
I've never paid this much. Well, I suppose I have, in that I've bought a day for $10 and only used it for an hour. And yes, I'll pay that (or let my company pay that). If I can get an hours worth of work done in the airport instead of watching CNN, that's a *bargain* for the company. An even better argument is spending that 10 minutes writing an e-mail so someone back at work isn't spinning their wheels for two days.
Considering the battery drain wireless puts on my laptop, 1 hour is about all I can use anyway. And I'm never nearly awake enough in the morning to remember that power cable.
What I don't understand, is why people don't research anything and then bitch about "how expensive it is". It is NOT expensive.
If anyone actually bothered to go to T-Mobile web site and see the service plans, you would know you can get DAY pass for $10. And if you have T-Mobile cell phone, unlimited WiFi is $20 a month. Beats many dial up providers by mobility AND price.
And, while on the subject, WiFi might become even less needed as same T-Mobile now offers free WAP browsing, and unlimited "corporate" GPRS is also $10.
Access is getting cheaper and cheaper, allthough there will always be providers, that try to charge twice as much for the same service.
Hyperom.com
this pay for play model is pretty sick considering a majority of americans do not make $10/hour.
this too shall come to pass.
Would you pay $20 to see a movie?
Yes. I live in Japan you insesitive clod.
The future is "wireless broadband" (somewhat tied to "3G"), available since October in Washington, DC and San Diego with speeds advertised as up to 2mbps, 300-500kbps typical.
WiFi's not going away, of course -- people will still want to connect their homes that were built before 2002. It could also serve as a tool to building a separate Internet away from excessive corporate/government control, though it seems to me it would be too easy to jam -- laser would probably be better.
All this hype about WiFi reminds me of 1997, when 1.5mbps DSL was available in limited areas around Washington, DC, and the rest of the country was harping on how to boost modem speeds from 40kpbs to a "full" 56kpbs.
1.Why buy what you can freeload or steal?
2.Why use such an insecure POS rf poluting bunch of shit?
3.Do you really want at the gigahertz crap around your eyes and soft tissue?
4.Do you like that third arm out of your head?
5.Ten Bucks a day maybe a for month but not a day
6.It's just not that cool that i have to have it
7.If my boss thinks I need it he can pay for it
Please keep you gigahertz rf away from my eyes, brain and other soft tissues.
As has been observed, wireless internet access is too cheap to meter for a business. Business should set it up themselves (or an outside company should charge a one-time fee for setting it up). The problem is that wireless providers get into the mix and want to turn a profit independent of the hosting business.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
Find One near you!
They don't hide the SSID , there is no password and if you don't have a laptop, or don't want to sit on the floor outside the store, feel free to use any of the BRAND NEW computers set up in the store!
I like microcars
Fact: Only idiots will think WiFi is worth $10 an hour.
Imagine if you had to watch Return of the King over wireless. That'd be $35, Probably even rounded up to $40! Damnit, I'd still have to watch it too . . .
`which fortune`
Hey guys, it is not $10/hr but $10/24 hour. Check this out. They will be charged $9.99 for a 24-hour pass to connect to T-Mobile's hot-spot service.
Has no one really looked at the total dichotomy of McDonald's and Starbuck's trying to do this? McDonald's is a fast food restaurant where they have spent tens of thousands of hours of designing a restaurant based upon throughput. The chairs are uncomfortable. The color scheme is not a good long term colorscheme. The designers wanted people to stay approximately 15 minutes and then leave.
Yes, I saw it and immediately wondered what the suits were partaking of. McD's business model is based on volume, if you're sitting in your seat for more then 15 minutes, they're probably losing money on you.
To go along with a city-wide fibre-optic network, the City of Fredericton quietly launched a wireless network covering most of downtown Fredericton. It's free, all you have to do is associate to the network, and you're done.
The project, recently started, now covers a large part of downtown Fredericton, and is supposed to extend to the city's largest mall by the end of the year (it's getting close guys...), and then in 2004 to extend further, and, by the end of 2005, the entire city should be wired - or rather, not.
I'm looking forward to the mall being connected - there aren't any major obstructions between our house and the mall (that I'm aware of), so I might be able to get a clear signal. Here's hoping.
--Dan
I find it bizarre that people would go to somewhere like Starbucks, where you have to pay for the T-Mobile(?) wireless access, when, here in Davis Calif., at least, you can walk literally a few blocks away and go to another coffee shop which has completely free wireless (and better snacks :^) ) Walk another block up, and there's yet ANOTHER cafe with free, open wireless.
There's a southwest restaurant near where I live in Davis, and they have wireless you have to pay for. They now advertise "free wireless with $5 purchase," so I pulled by Zaurus out one time and tried it. It was only 20 minutes of access! (Quick calculation... that's $15-food-dollars per hour!)
Fortunately, at another shopping center where I live, there's yet another coffee shop with wireless. I'm lucky enough to have landed a job where I get to work from home, so I now use them as free office space. Completely free wireless... all I need to do is buy some coffee (and that's not even a rule, like it is at some places).
I doubt $10/hr wireless will last in places where there's demand for wireless, because a $50/month DSL line isn't that much, compared to the increased business you get for having free internet...
Sufficed to say, when UC Davis was in finals, this place got REALLY busy... lots of laptops.
Recently I was waiting at an airport gate in Philadelphia and noticed signs for AT&T wireless access. Eagerly launching my browser, I discovered that access would cost me $10 for a 24/hour period. While this initially seems like a good deal, I only had an hour or so to kill at the gate, not twenty-four, and so it occurred to me that I'd be paying $10 for about an hour of access. Checking their web page for AT&T's other airport locations, I determined that I wouldn't be able to use the access in my next connecting city (where again, I only had about an hour and a half connection anyway). So I thought about how much work I could do in an hour - essentially catching up on some e-mail - and decided it wouldn't be worth the $10.
On the other hand, I've noticed that in European airports, public internet terminals are the norm - but you rarely see those in American airports. The European terminals bill in small time increments; one can typically get online for 20 minutes or so for about 3 euro. They seem to get a lot of use.
Obviously, there are disadvantages to public terminals: the possibility of keyboard sniffers; clunky, no-moving-parts keyboards; the possibility of an unfamiliar language mapping, etc. But - the business model seems to make a reasonably shrewd assumption: that people in airports have small blocks of time available, and that they'll pay a few euro to make use of that time catching up on e-mail. Perhaps carriers offering WI-FI in airports should consider this - while there may be a few people with lousy enough flight connections to make good use of a 24 hour block of access in an airport, they might get a lot more users by also offering, for example, one hour for $3.
How much did you pay for the last DVD you bought? How many times did you watch it?
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
Figures,, so the Coffee Shop that is slowly taking over the world is the one item in Seattle that's not free? Or are we subsidising free access for you sort of like tribute flowed to Rome ?
$10/hour? Why, when you can probably search networks and find another network that's FREE which you can also access from Starbucks(TM)?
;-)
Hell, at home I can see 3 open access points, I don't even have to use my own! Of course, it's the only encrypted one of the bunch
WTF?
Why should they care? B is fast enough for anyone browsing the web. And why SHOULD the barista care?
If he calls you a dork for asking, and I'm there, I'll throw anouther buck in his tip jar.
It was pretty cool one day when someone asked me directions to something when I was walking on the street, I opened my powerbook, saw "Verizon Wi-Fi" as an available wi-fi net, and opened up mapquest and gave them directions all in a few seconds. I pay no extra fees for this, and it makes me more loyal to verizon (definately balances out the slightly higher cost of "pro" speed DSL).
Very nice to be able to sit in the park, near a payphone on the corner, and surf the web/check email.
At long last, a reasonable soul among the rattle and hum. I have been piggybacking someone's unsecure network since I bought my laptop a month ago, and am enjoying my FREE wireless a lot. It reminds of the good old days when FreeNet and Lycos were free dial-up ISPs and NetZero was the scraggler. In a true Utopian Democracy (haha!) the Internet should and would be FREE. Thanks to goodhearts like you, the days of 95 are here again, if only for a brief shining moment. Keep the Wi-Fi light burning in the window.
Paying $10 an hour for Wi-Fi access is almost twice as you pay for a movie.
Woo-hoo. Then I made money paying only $5.70 for over 3 hours of LoTR:RoTK.
Sometimes it's a deal. When I'm billable, my company charges my time at $125/hr. How many minutes do I have to save before its a deal? If I can save 15 minutes driving to a spot with a network jack, I've saved people money.
"Is WiFi worth $10/hr" is an unanswerable question - it totally depends on what you need the connection for. Want to surf and read the paper online? Maybe it isn't worth $5/hr. Need to get that report to the client or you will lose your contract - you better believe its worth a lot more than $10/hr.
There are also high-use or unlimited plans from T-Mobile and Verizon that bring the cost down considerably below $10/hr if you use the service a lot.
the wifi was unencrypted (whatever, that's what ssh is for) and the login server was also unencrypted (not good). their system also stripped all emails i sent so everyone I emailed using my regular ssl - pop connection just received blank emails from me. most annoying. next i discovered that my ssh connections were being blocked.
on top of this the service in the hotel was terrible and they moved my room a number of times, including for the last night they moved me to a tiny windowless single room. and to cap it off they were very reluctant to reduce the price of the room. all in all i felt ripped off. so to sum up, when staying in amsterdam forget the hotel maas.
I used to have a better sig than this, but I got tired of it
Would you pay $20 to see a movie? Probably not.
Give the MPAA some time, and the $20 movie just might become a reality.
No TiVo and no caffeine make me something something...
driving the wrong way down a 1 way street no less
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
To check urgent e-mail and get some files I really need when and were I need it? Certainly. I will expense it later anyway.
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
Pity there's no wireless access where I live. Nearby though in the city whose council brought online one of the first freenets (the ISP concept, not the P2P system) there's the excellent CafeNET wireless network that's been working pretty well. (Disclosure: I used them at the weekend at the behest of the competition and free December weekends they're currently running to promote their wirelessing the whole of the city's Golden Mile in an claimed world first. But they have a solid setup.)
They ordinarily charge by the byte, instead of by time, which I consider more fairer:
In short -- IMHO -- I think we shouldn't be thinking of whether x currency units per unit of time is worth it -- it should be how much you want to transfer for how many currency units (NZD, USD, EUR, AUD, GBP, whatever). The effective cost per megabyte is more than the 20 I am liable to pay for cable modem excess bandwidth, but at this point can be stomached for occasional access for e-mail (and that they aren't considering expiring unused credit, yet).
Also relevant I believe is the cost of equipment for this service among other competing technologies, but I'll leave that to others.
Jonathan Ah Kit - Lower Hutt, New Zealand - jonathan@metalab.unc.edu
Nothing would make me happier than getting all farty and bloated on a frothy latte while blowing my secretary/programmer salary 1:1.
Hell, I could check out all the latest innovations in penis enlargement technology, maybe peruse a little man-on-goat-on-sister incest reading, settle in on a favorite literary magazine... is it worth $10 an hour?
You bet your sweet ass it is, just as long as I can afford another 10-spot to pay my gimp to read it to me.
Art Schools Dietzilla
Every country that dares consider itself developed should provide free and ubiquitous wireless "last mile" access throughout its territory. Some day soon any country that wants to remain competitive will. In the US we need to get over the now defunct partitioning of spectrum for huge dollars. Otherwise we will be nickle and dimed into technological oblivion as the big players try to piecemeal recoup their huge spectrum licenising outlays.
no it isn't.
As long as it's per second use billing.
Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering.
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
Your comment proves beyond a doubt that low slashdot user numbers are dramatically more homosexual than the rest of the population.
So residents of Silicon Valley and the east coast of the USA are largely biased, but residents of Greece and Paris aren't? Greece and Paris are "real-world," but large parts of the US aren't? I have no interest in R'ing TFA after that little snippet.
However, just to get a little bit of on-topic content in here:
I'm too cheap to pay for wi-fi access; I'm unemployed and I already pay for internet access at home, anyway. I also run an unsecured wi-fi access point. I rather expect it to be abused, and I will lock things down when I see that happen, but to date I haven't seen anyone connect to my wireless router (except me, of course).
-Rich
$70 an hour?
definitely not! Go India!
As a geek opening a coffee house with internet connectivity, I feel I have a unique insight into both the coffe world, as well as the tech world.
Essentially, the problem is stated correctly. THERE IS NO BUSINESS model for selling wifi access alone.
My solution? I'm giving it away in my cafe, as a SERVICE to let my CUSTOMERS profit.
However, I'm NOT braindead.
I am giving away 2 hrs per device per day.
I think that's generours enough.
If someone wants more time (such as someone camped out in a tent in my parking lot, or the folks who live above my store), they can pay me as an ISP for guaranteed monthly bandwidth.
Neither fish nor fowl, I know, but the best and fairest plan going forward.
I even decided that I should have a commercial priced service too, so I have 3 levels:
free (2hrs/day)
residential (30/month
commercial (70/month)
So will you pay $10 to use a Wi-Fi connection for one hour?
Not as long as I have a Pringles can and my neighbors 0wnz3rd Wireless Access Point.
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
If I can send outgoing and download incoming mail in about 2 mins, then that's easily worth 33 cents. Ditto for wget'ing some webpages.
While I am not completly thrilled with wifi prices, I use tmobile for $10/day (24 hours) and can get unlimited during a month for $40. I think earthlink is similarly priced. Since I don't need it that often, I go by the day, but whoever is charging $10/hour will probably not be in business for long. I live in Chicago not San Francisco, but I find it hard to believe that the prices are that much higher anywhere in the country.
Ivan Handler
I've seen quite a number of cafes go out of business in the last several years. It happens because some patrons like to hangout in cafes for hours on end without offering much patronage. I like the idea of free wifi, but imagine that if Starbucks offers it, some people would simply snap up a table and veg for the entire day. Some would veg even without buying one tall coffee for a buck 35. They start losing money that way - not so much because of the expense of wifi, but that paying customers wouldn't have a place to sit.
Of course it also stands to reason that notebook computers need more than just a network - but also power. That's sort of another way to limit usage, although new line of notebooks can run much longer these days.
Robust anonymous mesh networking via WiMax will quickly cover nations and form the next net. The old business corupted net can connect or die, but in time it will be replaced.
Intel claims they will put an xbox in a PDA- regardless the day will come when one buys a mobile unit from say IBM that will act as node- there won't be any back bones to pay for or any of that. The public supplies the power and the public owns the equipments. The internet has raised awarness and accelerated communication. The net existed prior to all the marketing fluff and profit seeking and one of its prime functions has been to rid society of many outmoded organizations arrangements. The telcos will go the way of the RIAA via death by obsolecense.
there must be at least as many free access points in my city as those stupid 29.99 a month HotSpots.
Carribou provides free access close to me, and there coffe isn't bitter like Starbucks either.