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Is WiFi Access Worth $10/hour?

Posted by timothy on from the not-in-seattle-it's-not dept.

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."

5 of 346 comments (clear)

  1. Not without security measures... by metalion · · Score: 5, Interesting
    WiFi is certainly not worth $10 an hour. When I first heard about the T-Mobile Hotspots at the StarBucks locations, I had intiially thought that they were free to the customers. I however, quickly found out that this was not the case. True, T-Mobile has a comprehensive network of Hotspots but this still does not warrant the high price associated with simply using the WiFi connection at a StarBucks.

    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...

    1. Re:Not without security measures... by gessel · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It's not the security that I'd pay for, I use SSH anyway.

      The whole business model is idiotic. What you're paying for is billing - to bill all us random jerks who wander from place to place, and show up once, then again in some other state a few months later. It's not trivial and getting all the invoices out is what costs the money, most of them for 10 minutes of use ever month or two.

      I travel a lot on UAL, and the red carpet clubs have largely adopted T-Mobile. But they have free local POTS access. I pay $25 a month for AT&T Global and I can dialup locally almost anywhere in the world and get a reliable 28.8, usually better.

      Membership in the RCC isn't cheap, and I've been suggesting that they rethink wireless access as a loss-leader. The setup costs are, obviously, trivial, and they already have good network connectivity for their won operations. They could easily set up wireless access point and give away service for free. I suspect they'd make back their money with one additional member per site, and they'd probably recruit 100's if not 1000's.

      (I pay my fees for a stall I don't have to share my luggage with, a few free lattes a month, and the aforementioned free local phone service).

      I'm sure they're getting a few bucks from T-Mobile, but whatever it is, they're being penny wise and pound foolish. The same basically goes for all wireless service providers. What we need is a movement to set up nearby free/open WAPs and just kill fee for wireless stupidity once and for all.

  2. $10 an hour for WiFi? by thellamaman · · Score: 5, Funny

    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

  3. Re:paying for wireless? by clifyt · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I run an unencrypted unsecured WLAN...or at least I use to.

    Anything important enough to warent encryption did so between the machine and its server, so that was never a problem...if someone sees other files flying around, who cares.

    As for unsecured, that too was something I was cool with. If someone needed to use my lan, I was happy to oblige...I have my airport on the 3rd floor of my home, and it got pretty good coverage in my neighborhood if I just aimed my iBook just right.

    BUT, I started getting HUGE downloads that would slow down my entire network, and thats when I got a little irked. It wasn't friends that showed up and pulled in front of the house to check email on their way from point A to B, I think some kiddie was downloading huge warez or porn vids through it. I had the major trading softwares firewalled at the main router, so I wasn't worried about that.

    But the fact these people got greedy ended up pissing me off to the point I started filtering via Mac Address.

    So, if you don't want to pay -- thats cool for most of us. Just don't be a greedy bastard and you might end up being allowed to use these networks for a bit longer :-)

    BTW -- to keep this on topic for the rest of this posting, 2 bigger coffee shops in my area (within 10 minutes walking distance) have free internet access as well. Its an advertised service and one of the reasons folks come in and stay 3 hours. If small shops like this can do it and not charge a penny, companies like Starbucks should be able to do it for free as well (then again, Starbucks doesn't care about bringing in customers...the fact that its there will kill off 70% of the coffee shops in its vacinity because most people would rather go with a brand name than quality).

  4. Re:After a quick R of TFA ... by Dr.+Photo · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... 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.