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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."
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
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!
"WiFi is certainly not worth $10 an hour."
It is when I'm on a business trip.
"Derp de derp."
... 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?
:'-(
Traditionally? That's preposterous. The last of the traditional WiFi clans were wiped out in the 1300s by the Black Plague, leaving the world without free wireless Internet access for nearly seven centuries. Truly those were dark times.
The practice of charging for WiFi access dates back to the early 15th century, as Genoese and Venetian merchants took to the seas with wireless NICs and Access Points, handcrafted in northern Italy.
It has been speculated that Napoleon's European campaigns were in fact motivated by his deep and abiding anger at the poor WiFi reception he got in Parisian coffee shops, due to his diminutive height.
He took his armies all over Europe, looking for that one sweet hotspot where he could sit quietly and download porn.
The British picked up on this, and set up a giant Access Point to lure the would-be conqueror to Waterloo, a strategem invented by General Lu Meng during the Wu dynasty. The rest, as they say, is history.