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Cringely Proposes New WiFi Plan
DarkHelmet writes "This week, Cringely examines the current state of WiFi aggregators, and challenges their business model. His notion? An aggregator should distribute free equipment to internet users willing to share their connection. Although he proposes altered WiFi hardware specifically for his plan, his idea shows promise for a company with enough capital to provide all that free equipment."
The plan is missing a key component: incentive for the providers to do such a ridiculous, money-losing thing.
I have been pwned because my
How are we going to keep track, though? Wear a watch that beeps when there is an internet connection nearby, and stop and check out email? Is there going to be a list? Hell, I can't even find an accurate list of the coffehouses in Columbus that have WiFi!!!
/usr/bin/grep -i -E meaning life.txt
This is just asking for the next major worm. If Joe Public can't configure his win box through a nice comfy GUI or update it now and again, he's going to have a hell of a time securing shared WiFi hardware. Sure, it would be nice to be able to say browse the web while waiting for a train or check your e-mail on the bus going into work. What however isn't so nice is the prospect of having your entire local area being compromised and being used as zombies in DDOS attacks and God knows what else. Maybe we should wait until they can protect their own boxes before trusting them as a gateway for someone elses?
Aren't you concerned that the feds are going to show up at your door because someone was downloading child porn on your connection and they think it was you?
Seems you're assuming a lot of liability to me.
The equipment runs about $200 to set up a fancy 802.11 hotspot, probably down to $100 or less shortly. Imagine that one of the 802.11 access point/gateway manufacturers set up the sort of thing needed for this to work -- bandwidth prioritizing for the owner, and filtering of spam/attacks for others.
Now, say your running Jose's cafe. You have two choices:
* Set up a hotspot that only users of MegaCorp Hotspot Aggragators can use, for free
* Set up a hotspot for everyone in your cafe for $200, and advertise "free wireless Internet" and increase traffic.
Which are you gonna do? Without some profit motive, you'll probably go for the second choice. Especially since in the case of most networks, you want random friends/business clients/etc. who come over to be able to use it, and you want your Dell with built-in wireless not to need a special card.
I think free wireless would be ubiquitous, if the equipment was set up for more reasonable connection sharing than WAP/no-sharing or no-WAP/security hole.
Is this really new? Did'nt Joltage (even Nicholas Negroponte was on its board) try the same thing and finally go under? After such a high profile failure and many not so high profile ones, not to mention the liability issues of sharing internet access [what if someone downloads child porn using your network, or breaks into some computers or shares music. Since you are NATing, RIAA sees your IP and comes after you!] , your service agreement with your ISP etc I dont think this model will work.
Granted Joltage gave only the SW, but the HW components are cheap enough that giving them free is also not going to help.
The 'hotspot business model' is just running around like a headless chicken...