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NYT: Making Free Wireless Wi-Fi Internet Pay
securitas writes "The New York Times' Matt Richtel writes about the the challenges of finding a sustainable business model for 802.11 Wi-Fi wireless Internet. The problem for entrepreneurs, telecom companies and others is that the proliferation of free wireless access hotspots at the municipal and grassroots level has obviated commercial carriers' revenue and profit models in many cases. One user quoted in the story sums up the attitude of many wireless users: 'The Internet is free here.... Why would I pay?' IHT, published by the New York Times in Paris, is carrying an abbreviated version of the story."
I had one person tell me I had no right to lock down my WiFi access points at my home and the 3 WiFi at my church because the internet should be free, and I was dening people access to the internet by not alowing them access to a pipe they were not paying for.
The article makes no mention of security which, it seems to me, will be the best way to make money in the hot-spot business. When I use a public, non-WEP hotspot, all I ever do is SSL to my command-line account and run pine or some such. (My internet provider hasn't done secure POP yet, but they're working on it.)
On the other hand, maybe there's no money in security either. When traveling for work, I can use secure VPN into the company system, and it doesn't matter whether my hotspot is secure or a total cesspool. So there's no reason to pay extra for T-Mobile on the company dime, and I'm certainly too cheap to pay extra when on my own dime -- I'll just use SSL to check email.
It is a conundrum. Perhaps WPA is the solution, but I'm not waiting up nights for it to be widely implemented.
But what is the cost of adding a router? ALL businesses should have access to the internet. There should just be a one time expense of the router.
So you are correct in a sense that you get what you pay for - cheap router, maybe not always stable, or slow access. At pay sites, like Waypoint for instance - these models work fine because they have exclusitivity in Airports around the country and the access is controlled by very nice quality high end equipment. So you truly are getting what you pay for.
I agree with a post above - businesses will offer wifi just as they offer bathrooms and air conditioning to their customers.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
I was staying at a hotel a few weeks back and I had my laptop with me. For $10, I could get wired broadband in the room for 24 hours. Seemed a bit steep to me so I waited until I came to a point where I absolutely needed the internet. I was sitting at the desk on the other side of the room (near the window) when my laptop, an old G3 Powerbook with a Linksys Wireless-G card, told me that a wireless network was suddenly available, 50% strength. Curiously, I connected to it and it didn't require a password. As soon as iChat signed on, I noticed that someone using the router had a Mac too and was signed on Rendezvous IM. I started up a chat and explained my predicament to him. He said it was great to meet me and I could use his new wireless access point as much as I wanted, as long as I kept my bandwidth use under control.
And that's pretty much how a lot of people feel about wireless broadband. As long as you don't inconvenience them, you're free to use their network. It's that attitude that basically makes paying for wireless access an unsustainable business model. I wonder how long until ISPs band together to make open connection sharing illegal and scare everyone into thinking that sharing their connection is morally wrong.
This is the kind of thing that happens when much of your customers are also your engineers (or interchangable with them.)
Its what happens when your service-providing hardware becomes commodity.
Have we ever been able to benefit from such a super-scaled economy before? I don't think so; it will take some getting used to.
Welcome the new generation, no longer hostage to high setup costs; We can do it ourselves.
- OK, admittedly because the hi-tec industry keeps churning out the pieces; this is the bottom of the technology/market food chain, but its never looked so good before.
Everything is marginal and there are enough people to eat the margin.
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
So, how long has 802.xx equipment been available? I would understand if this were a budding technology that was just breaking, but I have had a wireless router for 2 years, and I am certainly not an early adopter. The truth is that businesses that should have been on this bandwagon all along are only now seeing the potential for profit. Sorry guys you missed the boat on this one. Also, I would argue that there is already a great business model in use. Free wi-fi for customers of your restaurant/cafe/bookstore etc.
I agree completely.
And I think the arguments you cited are the reason why we won't see Free Wifi at most airports.
I think many secondary and minor airports will do it, though. (i.e. Long Beach, which is a minor airport near LAX)
What I am looking forward to is Free Wifi on the airplane. the technology is there.
The security side is a joke - If you are connecting to work to download that critical report, you're going to be connecting to a VPN, whether it's IPSEC, PPTP, or SSL based. Each one of these is more secure than the WEP or WPA based security that a commercial hotspot will be providing.
Ewan
For whatever reason, market economy is always assumed to solve all problems related to electronic infrastructure. And that assumption is the reason why dsl services are still embarassingly overpriced in the US.
This is a repost of a comment I made that nobody modded :-)
Free hotspots are acceptable in places where it's not much of a marginal cost, and where people wouldn't be able to 'leech' very much (i.e., hotels and such.) But in places where there are a lot of randoms, that is no good.
I've also seen pay-to-access credit card methods, but I wouldn't want to use them -- that is mainly for business users.
An advertising based hotspot as in this article seems very annoying, but it would also be pretty easy to hack Mozilla and get around the advertising overall.
How else can we pay for wireless? Here -- My idea, never heard it elsewhere, I think it's good:
A wireless hotspot 'jukebox' (or parking meter, or vending machine, or whatever metaphor you would like).
It is simply a box with a coin deposit -- anyone can go up and put a coin in, and the machine gives everyone in range Internet access for X amount of time. (1 dollar for 15 minutes? If people actually USED dollar coins, it would be good, I think).
Anyway, I believe the social model of this would be interesting: the person who needs it most and who can probably afford it the easiest (doing business or whatever) will end up paying for everyone as long as they want to use it. If there is no 'business user' at the time, the people who just want to use it casually will probably just volunteer to pay for one unit at a time.
This method is convenient, easy to implement, cheap to build, and easy to use. Admittedly, business users would probably rather have a credit card and authentication system that would allow them to charge it to the company, but I think that casual users would spend quite a bit more than they currently do. It is pretty cheap for them.
Anybody hear of anything like this implemented anywhere else?
Maybe theres a future in mesh Wi-Fi as a possible help to business models. Im not sure about the legalities of reselling services, but say a bunch of businesses get together and offer coverage of a 2km radius in a town, they could get other businesses to chip in and spread the cost so it becomes very little per business. I saw somewhere that a local tourist board were subsidising such a venture so they could call claim to be a 'Wi-Fi Internet enabled town'. I know its not traditional business, but ideas like this are needed to help spread the cost of free public access.
Don't forget that for the normals, free is synonomous with paying for the service through price increases in other areas. There are hoards of people (and I use the word in its most flexible sense) that will gladly pay $10 for a cup of coffee because that coffee shop has "free" high speed wifi, which they need to check their text based email every ten minutes for fresh spam.
Especially if someone tells them that helps their cell phone reception.
Free is not the future so long as it is run by private entities. There are several reasons why this is so:
-security -- sure someone isn't sniffing your data and/or hammering your system for vulnerabilities while you surf?
-reliability -- when the access point you are connecting to locks up, who do you call?
-quality of service -- does the person operating the AP you are connected to have SSH blocked? What about FTP? SMTP? You just don't know.
It seems to me what is REALLY happening is that free wireless Internet is making plain access a comodity such that high premiums won't last. Look for services beyond Internet access to appear widespread.
Also look for one of two things to happen -- either providers using the free spectrum will have to charge tax for providing service OR wired companies will become exempt from having to charge them.
This is precisely why we make our free downtown wifi limited, both in terms of total throughput and in terms of ports accessible. This leaves a viable niche open for commercial for-pay options, and ideally those commercial providers will offer a free option as well. Assuming they find any viable way to deploy such a short-range technology at all.
Promote civility: mod down any post starting with 'ummm'.
Until someone comes up with an Internationally Recognized symbol that you can paint on the wall, put up in the window, or otherwise make known, which means "WI-FI ACCESSIBLE HERE ... USE DHCP TO GET AN IP ADDRESS", and by 'recognized' I mean on the same order as that of other major international symbols ... then, WI-FI is forever going to be a 'fringe' service.
... but until then, users of WI-FI are still going to have to be experts of the ether in order to 'know' when and where they can get on the 'net ...
I'd use WI-FI, everywhere it was available, and I'd pay for it too, if only it was really easy to see where WI-FI was going to be accessible. Someone come up with a good WI-FI branding strategy first and then we'll see successful WI-FI economic models come into place
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
It's not binary choice; it's a duality. As I write about all the time on my Wi-Fi weblog, a certain category of Wi-Fi hotspot user will wait for reasonable roaming plans and then pay for it (or their business will more likely pay) because it gives them a predictable, consistent, high-speed experience.
Free is great, and free doesn't have to be inconsistent or mom and pop. For instance, look at Austin Wireless City or Marriott's budget hotel chain (free wired or Wi-Fi in all of their mid-level hotels by the end of 2005).
But for business venues and business districts and a consistency in access, people will pay. If every McDonald's has branded Wi-Fi and it's just $20 per month, then certain travelers--perhaps millions--will take advantage of that.
When roaming kicks in full scale, and all US hotspots are covered by a $20 per month fee from Comcast or Qwest or Boingo or other consumer firms reselling access, then for consumers who need it, there's no question. Businesses will pay $200 per month cell bills; a $20 per month surcharge for more productivity through unlimited US roaming won't be a big deal.
Freelance tech journalist for the Economist, MIT Technology Review, Macworld, and others
Actually, there's more to say on charging for aircon. Last year my wife and I spent a good deal of time in SE Asia for business and recreation. And it was very common to see aircon rooms rent for more, but not much more, and in N.America terms it was usually $5-10 on top of $20 rooms. I can't remember the last time I saw rooms in N.A. without aircon (maybe 20 years?).
Internet (let alone wifi) was virtually non-existent except Singapore and HK where it was everywhere and free.
Several hotel chains in the US are now advertising free WiFi connectivity when you stay at the hotel. This is where I see free hotspots as a business model -- a value add on an existing market. Given a choice between two hotels (all things being equal), which would you select, the one with the WiFi or the one without? Similar to advertising free cable TV, a pool, or even air conditioning, free WiFi can be used to attract customers at low cost for the establishment. Now that some are offering the incentive, I expect free WiFi to be an across-the-board service provided by any decent hotel.
Other environments, where you may only be using the service for an hour or less (cafe, airport, etc.) will have a hard time justifying a cost that makes the credit card processing worthwhile. A subscription model may work in this environment, but that just means another company is taking a chunk of any profit.
I have to think that WiFi (or some form of Internet access) will be considered a low cost utility or courtesy at some point -- like a water fountain, electrical outlet or even a public restroom. Most people take those for granted now, and I expect that the same will be true of WiFi in only a few years.
Paying for WiFi access now is paying for the deployment of the hotspots. Once they are reasonably ubiquitous, they will be "free" (included in the cost of doing business).
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
Do your customers pay by the minute for the lights in your store? The air conditioning?
There are a dozen different payment methods, data rates, flat rate payment, by the megabyte payment, by the minute payment, encryption keys, it's almost not worth the hassle. If an ISP were to come along and standardise the lot it might be worth it.
At the moment without the standardisation, the only way wireless is going to work is as an infrastructure cost, perhaps with limited bandwidth and access, encourage people to come in and smell the coffee so to speak.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
However, this is the first one to offer it and turned me into a loyal and repeat customer. In fact this morning I will answer emails and do some work and probably stay for lunch and order a sandwich and they make another $5 off me.
As a stand alone pay service, its doomed to failed, however as an incentive to get people into your place of business, especially one serving food and drinks, it can be a cheap and effective marketing tool.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
A small group of mountain residents, west of Boulder Colorado formed the Magnolia Road Internet Coop (http://www.mric.coop) nearly 3 years ago with our 1st paying members going online about 2 years ago. As a rural community, there is no access to cable modem service nor DSL. ISDN is very expensive for limited bandwidth. Satellite options have proven unsatisfactory and expensive.
Currently we have nearly 200 subscbribers and cover about 250 square miles of mountainous terrain. The cooperative is run by volunteers, which we feel is the only way to keep costs down and subsequently, subscriber fees. The current rates are $50/mo for up to 3 mbit/sec bandwidth and $85 for 802.11a service. We expect to be debt free early next year at which time fees will be reduced.
We have a very viable business model where commercial ventures in the area are struggling with high debt loads.
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!" -- Dr. Strangelove
Melbourne wireless is a group of people building their own network. Its not connected to the net mostly because the local telco charges per megabyte and all the other tier two providers (who claim their tier 1) bill the same way so the net is too expensive to give away connections....
Except.... the local telcos have annoyed me a great deal. I'm tired of seeing bills in the thousands of dollars a month for work's pathetic connection which does a less than a hundred gig a month. So I called up every local provder through their offices in the US and got price quotes there for service here. I've now got a spare bandwidth on an unlimited pricing plan. So lets see here, I'm mad the local telco, I've got roof space on the 129th tallest building in the world as well as a few other choice spots, I've got a few nice 120 degree max-rad antennas, I've got spare bandwidth that won't cost me anything if I give it away and a service contract that lets me resell or share it. I wonder what I should do.
My friend has a little coffee shop near our campus. I installed a wifi hotspot for him with a Comcast business connection and an access point. His cost for the first year was about 1200USD. His business tripled. So, anecdotally, giving wifi away as a loss-leader works.
--toby
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
I generally fly United I have my points there and my company has contract rates with them so I usually take a connection from my local (small) airport through ORD or DEN to get where I need to be. My company also has contract rates with Northwest and if MSP and DTW offered free Wi-Fi that would be sufficient reason for me to change airlines.
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.