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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 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 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
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!
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.
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!
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."
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.
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.
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.
While we're at it, I need a place to stay next month when I'll be in your town. I probably won't get drunk and punch holes in your walls, pee in your sink, and puke in your sock drawer.
There is an off chance I'll leave some herione and child porn wedged in your dresser, but I'm sure the cops will beleive you when you tell them it was me.
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
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
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!
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 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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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
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.
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
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.
$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
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.