Slashdot Mirror
Cometa WiFi Hotspot Network To Shut Down
Glenn Fleishman writes "The folks who announced in Dec. 2002 that they would install 20,000 for-fee Wi-Fi hotspots across the U.S. within two years ago reached several hundred locations in 18 months before shutting down today. Cometa Networks was funded partly by Intel Capital, and had AT&T and IBM's involvement in building the network. The firm resold access to its network, and urged partners to charge low rates, like $3 to $5 per day or $12 per month for unlimited access. Cometa lost its best chance for a big network last month, when McDonald's picked Wayport to build out over 12,000 Wi-Fi hotspots in the U.S." There's now an official press release up, with the CEO noting: "We do not think this reflects on the strength of the Wi-Fi industry or value proposition."
No, fee is different than free. Even the /. write-up said "that they would install 20,000 for-fee Wi-Fi hotspots across the U.S. within two years". I think the real issue with the business plan was that they expected people to pay too much for too little.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Everybody just read this dweeb's suggestion in yesterday's article!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
We've just recently received FREE wifi via cometa at our local Barnes and Noble (ultra left-liberal book sellers). They've got a setup where they lease an IP to any MAC address for 2 hours per day. Great for sketchy p2p sessions w/ 1.8Mbit uploads.
i have to say that last summer, I was in NYC for MacWorld, and stopped in at a McDonalds to try out their new WiFi and stuff, got my value meal and a little card with a scratch off area and a access code under it, and went upstairs. I sat down, ate, and pulled out my PowerBook. It saw the AP no problem, connected right up, and when I launched Safari, it went right to my home page. no login or anything.
Now I know that it was a trial location, and this was possibly one of the reasons that McDs went with the other company, but I'm not so sure I'm sad that a company whose security on their APs was so lax to go out of business.
I mean, open APs are nice, but its really not in the public good, becuase they would have ended up getting abused for spammers and warez and such.
(and yes, it was Cometa, because the little card has their logo on it)
oh well...my $0.02
e to the pi i plus one equals zero
Now tell me what the competative advantage to having 3 sites with an average of 12 people in a location. I have never understood the advantage of building hugely distributed teams - I've worked in them... I have also worked on very localized teams (everyone on the same part of the same floor of the same building) - I have yet to see a distributed team that can match a localized team
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
A better business model would be to blanket the U.S. with a WiFi services, and have a setup where someone can sign up and be assured that he has access wherever he goes that has a hotspot.
The T-Mobile stuff has two big problems- too expensive and not nearly enough hot spots. There is no way I'm paying their rates and only have access at Starbucks and a few select airport areas, etc.
By the same token, any business owner should feel free to offer free WiFi in the hopes of attracting more customers- it costs very little for a small business- simply corporate grade DSL and a bit of hardware.
This already exists. Airpath Wireless provides roaming features between several large hotspot providers, as well as operating its own hotspot network. Airpath has WISPs in 17 countries and has roaming agreements with Sprint, iPASS, GRIC, and many others. Really cool stuff.
Interesting to compare these guys to Truckstop.net. Currently have rolled out 420 or so hotspots in 5 months, with plans to get around 3000 locations. Of course, their typical customers are truck drivers (hence the name), but anyone with with wireless and proximity to a location can sign up. Also, they charge the user directly, instead of charging the location. Still, once you sign up you can use any Truckstop hotspot at all, which can be pretty useful if you are travelling.
You can get to a nifty map on their page that shows all current and planned locations.
From a business perspective, here are the problems I see with Wi-Fi:
i. Too many competing WAPs (i.e. wireless providers) basically means that you can't roam. This problem exists in the cellphone world as well but they are trying some things to overcome. For Wi-Fi to take off, it would be desirable for people to roam between stores without paying for each one. Note: I am only talking about non-free (possibly low cost) Wi-Fi here. Obviously if it is free, this isn't an issue.
ii. The second thing, which is probably the biggest, is that the number of people using Wi-Fi has to increase. In other words, more people need to be carrying around notebook computers, (future) PDAs, etc. Right now, I don't think enough people have portable computers for this to really matter. Granted, professionals and IT people, along with some computer-savvy people, may carry their notebooks all the time, but most don't. At best, wi-fi will only be a small market for now. Until more people starting using portable computers with wi-fi capabilities, it won't take off. The fact that McDonald's is rolling this out will have little impact IMO since most of their customers don't carry notebooks around. Lastly, if only a few people benefit from wi-fi, then the cost will always be too high--critical mass won't be reached.
Having said all this, I am NOT saying wi-fi won't take off. I do expect it to become popular in 5 years or so, especially when wi-fi is a standard for home networking and workplace too. All I'm saying is that whoever that uses wi-fi now will not make any money. Those in the market will probably lose money for years but will definitely get some technical advantage.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places