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WiFi Free-For-All
my_LART writes "Information Week reports that WiFi access is becoming a free commodity. Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT) has recently dropped its pay-per-use model and has installed free access to the WLAN in the food court and will be expanding access to the gates. On a similar note, Choice Hotels International is planning a WLAN rollout at its 370 Comfort Suites and 140 Clarion properties by the end of May. Choice Hotels International plans on expanding the rollout to two more of the company's brands by the end of the year. While this is great for us Road Warriors, how can this make financial sense? Choice Hotels can certainly markup the cost of the rooms by a few dollars per night, but how is PIT planning on reclaiming the costs? Regardless, lets hope other airports and hotel chains follow suit."
Normally, people that would do hacking, credit card fraud or just plain spamming would be traceable, not anymore so when half the internet is made out of freely accessible hotspots? Or would they block all interesting ports except port 80 and 443 to allow casual webbrowsing?
My local trendy cafe/art gallery, The Canvas (Lincoln and 9th in San Francisco, right on the corner) now has free wireless during business hours. You can walk in, and its full of people - most with a laptop, but they also have one important thing: the food they bought at the cafe. So, the Canvas can get 1.5 mbit DSL for $40 a month, and get at least 40 more people a day buying more food, probably at least amounting to the total cost of the DSL per month, every day.
Please forgive my ignorance, but wouldn't these kinds of WiFi access points be an ideal place to upload a virus or any other type of malicious code onto the internet? I mean, it would be almost untraceable, right? If so, it would seem that almost anyone could write the code/test it on their own machines, and then unleash it on the world from one of these points.
There are two kinds of people in the world: those with loaded guns, and those who dig.
Good god. I "work from home", so I often go to the local cafe with free WiFi for a change of pace. All my work stuff is done through encrypted VPN, and I use a software firewall and SSL for everything else. So I'm running EffeTech's HTTP Sniffer to debug my app server, and by default it dumps ALL HTTP traffic on the LAN. So I saw all full HTTP request and responses from all the laptops in the cafe. Mostly dull web surfing, but a lot of people check email using plaintext connections, which blew my mind.
~ The Fudge Report @ http://mywebpages.comcast.net/fudgereport/
Coffe shops, book stores, airports, hotels, what's next!? You know where I want to see WiFi access? How about the doctors office, or the DMV? Where I unwilling have to spend hours of my life waiting for someone or something! Or what about WiFi at the grocery store so I can post my shopping list to my blog and then read it off to myself from the comfort of the grocery store asiles.
**Ends Rant**
-This sig has been discontinued after a sudden realization.
I bet airconditioning and heating costs a lot more than WiFi+Internet.
;).
And the airport provides these to anyone who walks in for free.
Heck without the dynamic access controls and payment stuff it's only slightly more complicated than providing piped in music and announcements.
Of course if more people started supporting my suggestion of using http://here/ to get more info about the network you are using "here", there'll be more scope for some interesting stuff. e.g. malls can redirect you to a different website depending which Mall Zone's "here" you are in - listing specials. Heck you might even be able to vote for the piped in music you want
Similarly for a cafe - you could chat/play games with patrons locally.
I flew there for the first time a few months ago, and was happy to find open WIFI in the food court, as well as shops and food that were not jacked up to normal airport prices. Nothing there was any more than at a regular shopping mall. Since then, I have intentionally scheduled my flights back to where I work so that my layover is at PIT. If I'm stuck there a few hours, I could care less. It's perfect for catching up on mail and surfing. In my case, it IS making a difference.
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
(Smash amp, burn guitar, take home the groupies)
Cost to DSL providers for providing net access to a residence is down to $20/mo. Quintuple that to $100/mo for shits and giggles. Tack on another $100 for the access point.
For a year, that's $1200+$100 = $1300 / 365 = $3.56 per day per access point. If your business can make an extra three and a half dollars per day by having net access around, you should set up wifi.
Of course, if you TRY to charge, and TRY to set up all these complicated access mechanisms, you have to spend all this money on support -- money you never make back.
--Dan
I got fired, formed my own consulting company and now our business is taking off and my old company is in Chapter 11.
But that's beyond the point. One of my favorite places o go is a locally owned coffee house. About 4 years ago they bought a couple used laptops and rented then out for $7 an hour. About 18 months ago, they started giving free WiFI, guess what, they've made a lot more money, because people like me use it to work away from work. I deal with customers from 10 AM - 5PM, then about 5:30 goto the coffee shop, grab a bite to eat, a bottomless cup and do my work until about 8PM, then go home. Guess what though, I am so regular as soon as I walk in, they tell the exact bill and everything's ready togo. We often meet clients there as well because of the asmostphere. $100 in gear and $80 a month for a commerical Cable connection is pretty cheap to bring in repeat customers. Hell, they proably almost recover the bill from me alone. When they switched to free mode, two new coffee houses were opening in the area. Guess what, they are still in business, one is out of business, and the third is still there, but doesn't do near the business as the local favorite.
Hotels are another story. I was at a meeting/seminar at a hotel and I was the first to test their WiFI connection. Its extremely handy and we quickly booked our next daylong seminar because of the easy access. Now others offer the same, but its a convience, and if they can improve bookings by 5 - 10%, it will more than pay for the service.
My last story is that of our favorite all night diner. Its not uncommon for us to work until 1 or 2 AM. Usually take an hour off for news and Leno's monologue then go out for coffee and a late night snack. Well, we noticed that they too put in free WiFI access. We sometimes have working lunches there as well, although its not widely used as say the coffee house.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.