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WiFi Hotspots to Cost Wireless Carriers $12B
j.e. writes "Commercial WiFi hotspots and open WiFi networks will take about $12 billion out of wireless carrier revenue pie, says Starategy Analytics. With high prices of mobile data services from wireless carriers, the users are more prone to use a cheap WiFi connection, if one is available."
things cost money...
No smoking sigs indoors.
I used the EDGE from Cingular wireless data plan. $80 (0x50 dollars) a month! It worked decent but the worst part was the latency. I was getting 1-2 second latencies. Do not try to game with it at all. Yet I'd still like a single everywhere-network rather than dealing with lots of accounts with various wi-fi hotspots. If they could just get the latency down and improve reception (if your cell is showing half power don't even bother with trying data).
Transcend Humanity. Please.
This sounds like crap statistics if I've ever heard them. Cost $12 billion is a little different than "Won't make $12 billion because the services are overpriced."
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
"With all these free radio stations people won't buy our records."
"With all these free movies on TV people won't go to the movies."
Having said that, cellphone service is nowhere near what it should be in terms of reliability and quality. How many of the main carriers allow you to do what you want with your phone (e.g. bluetooth restrictions in many phones) and your service (forward messages & voicemail via email, etc)?
Damien
97.576% of all statistics are inaccurate.
time is a perception of a being's consciousness
time is your 6th sense, the wierd ones are 7+
Get a better business model. Or better yet, just go away. Just because people want something, doesn't mean they have to pay YOU to get it. More and more, they may not have to pay at all (open WiFi access points, Linux, etc).
$12 billion out of wireless carrier revenue pie, says Starategy Analytics
/. has cost my company $101 gabozillion dollars in lost productivity!
Reading
"With high prices of mobile data services from wireless carriers, the users are more prone to use a cheap WiFi connection, if one is available."
It was also discovered people are more likely to choose chocolate than liver. The remarkable people chose chocolate over liver.
I'm sure the salesmen of horses lost many potential sales due to cars back in the day. Does it mean anything?
I won't buy wireless service from a provider and this has nothing to do with wi-fi hotspots. I've never even used a wi-fi hotspot. The main reason that I won't buy wireless service from a provider is because of the insane price. I'm sure most people are in my boat.
They shouldn't have bought all those hotspots if they're going to complain about the price! It's amazing how stupid some people can be.
Step 2 is getting laws against free WiFi accessed passed in Congress.
Hey, it worked for the RIAA!!!
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
I thought the FCC gaurded the airwaves and held them in trust, for the American people? Does Joe and Sally Citizen need for the FCC to auction off the Bandwidth to the highest bidder? I think not. The sad part is all the hobbiest that are gonna get screwed, when the bandwidth they propogate is wanted for some other new technology. All this is is a sign that Joe and Sally Citizen are willing to do some grass roots, initiative type activities and spread the Bandwidth around.Screw the MAN!! so to speak, and for once utilize what is rightfully theirs. I understand that not all WiFi spots are opened purposfully and meant for use, but you cannot say that all of them are not meant to be so, either. I check for available spots before I go on any trips, and I keep Netstumbler and a few other tools with me always.
My cat's picked up a Hammer. HEY! Put down that Hammer. Put Down that Hamm...THUNK!
Poster forgot some words, it should read:
With the artificially inflated exorbitantly high prices of mobile data services from wireless carriers, the users are more prone to use a cheap WiFi connection, if one is available.
No sympathy for wireless carriers here, now they get to suffer for their own bad pricing plans...
"Wireless carriers will not earn $12B because better options exist."
Note: you can't lose what you don't yet have.
Interesting fact: you are not entitled to a profit. If your business model sucks, or if your product is too costly, it will fail. See also: airphones. Remember them? All gone now, because using cell phones (which everyone already has) before and after the flight is good enough.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
In other news, Linksys employees were seen dancing in the streets.
liqbase
I'm getting the sudden urge to go wardriving...
There are some places in the world were gprs is a cheaper option to dialup. For my girlfriend in jakarta, the dialup option charges her for how much time she spends online. While she can get unlimted access via gprs for about $20-$30 per month from indosat. Other than some major latency and connection issues to a couple sites, she can get dialup speeds pretty easily.
In America we are imprisoned by our fear of them.
There are ways around it. There is a product that allows it, PDANet. Also, there is a hack to allow bluetooth to use DUN at http://www.shadowmite.com/.
Fight Spammers!
An open hotspot with WIMAX-class range would attract an awful lot of leachers in any tech-savvy neighborhood. Likeley far more than most residential broadband connections could handle.
I doubt we'll ever see many free, open WIMAX hotspots. Open WiFi hotspots only really work because the limited range effectively limits the number of people that can leach any such connection to a handful.
I've already lost trillions on my canned-air venture this year alone. I figured that, as vital as breathing air is, people would be willing to pay my reasonable rate of $200 per cubic foot.
Apparently there's a free alternative that people are taking advantage of, driving my company out of business. How can I undersell free? Better label those free-breathers out there as "air pirates" and start a "get the facts" campaign about the total-cost-of-breathing.
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea...."
RFC 1925
Quick, let's start donations rolling.
What's Verizon's PayPal account?
3) Profit!!!!
Having watched many MANY people gleefully tout their new "connected" "enabled" or otherwise crappified phone only to be disappointed by the utter lack of basic service requirements like convenience, reliability, ease-of-use, I can assure you the only thing that's costing them $12B is their lack of those three and a failure to understand what people really want. They want it all and they want it now and they want it free. WIth the proliferation of WiFi hotspots, they can get it... so... you can't sell snow to eskimos... whatever.
Besides it doesn't COST you $12B when you haven't spent $12B. duh!
I know. run-on. bad punctuation, but hey, you didn't pay to read this!
In people subscribing to these services knowing that they can use them at wifi hotspots also.
This should be +5 insightful, not funny. It is only a matter of time before some "media friendly" senator attaches a rider to an education package that bans open WiFi access. Or more likely, a Homeland Security bill because Terroists might use open WiFi links in an attack.
Where would we be if Wheel had hid her round rock in a cave instead of showing everyone how it rolls?
Charge too much for something, and people will find another way to get it.
I wonder if there are any other businesses that could learn that lesson out there right now?
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
This will all come together when we have UMA phones. UMA lets a voice call roam between WiFi and 3G networks seamlessly, like moving between cells on the same network. It might even let a call roam between two overlapping 3G networks, like Cingular and T-Mobile, depending on which one has a cheaper or better signal at the moment. Then our smartphones can be really smart, choosing which network to access based on our own rules (maybe downloaded from a phone blog).
--
make install -not war
Should read, "WiFi to save wireless users $12B", or "WiFi to get up to $12B slice of wireless pie".
Not making as much revenue as predicted is not a "cost".
I'm selling ballpoint pens at $5 each. Each of you should buy them if you need something to write with.
What, it's too expensive? You can get pens cheaper somewhere else?
Damn it, you're costing me millions!
"Just find an open WAP" is most definately NOT always an option. That said, how much do the Hotspot providers make? I rarely see coffee shops with free wifi anymore. They've all settled on some for-profit wifi service, like jwire or the t-mobile hotspot setups.
Did I mention that I'm now in the Silicon Valley? Definately not BFE. I have an account with T-Mobile because I know that I'm very likely to find a hotspot when I need one. If there were more free hotspots, I might not really need such a service. Sadly, that's not really the case.
Lack of decent bandwidth and latency issues are costing wireless plans billions. WiFi's not the best thing on earth, but it sure beats the wireless broadband provided by Verizon. That money didn't belong to wireless providers to begin with. Another alternative could be that lack of hotspots costing WiFi programs billions since users are stuck with wireless in that case.
Bottled water companies lost $112bn to public water works agencies of cities and towns last year! I knew tap water was a communist subversion.
Whenever I hear discussions on Wifi hotspots I get the idea that we're building wifi connections the wrong way round. We're building wifi on the open road, that sometimes reaches into our houses/businesses. We could do it from the bottom up, based on the wifi access points in peoples houses.
How hard would a standard be, which would make it possible to extend the official network of the ISP to a users access point, maybe with a VLAN solution. This way if I open up my laptop and there is an access point available of Joe User, I can only hook up to it by propperly logging in to the ISP's network or use the airport/credit card system. This will require many roaming agreements etc, but it would bring security and convenience at the same time. It should be done in such a way that the person opening up his network in this way can throttle the speed of the guest users and/or the times they can access. So I would like to see a rule like "Guests can only connect when I am not connecting" or "Guests only get 1mbit"
Use Adsense for Charity
Why? Then cellular companies would have to compete on price, reliability, and service instead of locking their customers into cell plans and pillaging them. The whole point of cell phone plans is to lock your customers in and beat them silly. Anything that prevents cellular companies from doing that will either be neutered or prohibited; after all, isn't it Congress's job to fund unprofitable industries for their donors^H^H^H^H^H^Hcitizens?
I'll believe wireless carriers lose $12 billion when I see their gross revenue actually drop by $12 billion. As our massive experience with file downloads and other things has shown, many if not most of the people who use a free service either wouldn't use it if it weren't free, or are already paying for the same service from someone else anyway.
I wish wireless carriers and others would grow up and quit whining when people figure out that their products and services can be had for free.
This will all come together when we have UMA phones.
If only UMA can come together, see here
SteveM
Take the T-Mobile hotspot, for example. If you plan on using it a lot (and that's a lot of time spent at Starbucks), you can get away with spending a mere $29.99 a month. If you're not so sure, the price jumps to $39.00 a month, but you're free to quit. The price will jump even higher if you move to a per day or per hour plan.
Now take many local public venues (e.g. libraries, coffee houses, etc.) Many of these places will offer free access for their patrons. We have become quite spoiled by these free hotspots (I know I have, and I will prefer one of these places any time).
If there are more and more of these public access points offered, we will find more and more that, because of competition and free market forces, the price of WiFi access will plummit, possibly to near-zero. We (the consumer) just need to keep at it. If the technology is not profitable for businesses, wifi may become relegated to the realm of "promotional offer" or "advertising gimmick."
That if you didn't EARN the money, you didn't LOSE the money. If I pirate XP, MS lost nothing, 'cuz I ain't gonna BUY it. If I use a wifi hot spot rather that whatever (enter wireless carrier crap du jour here) is ofering, they didn't LOSE money! They failed to make a sale. Why does the public allow concepts like: projections that fall short, missed sales, "losses" due to "piracy", "street value" of drugs and/or goods - legal or otherwise, to be counted on real numbers when they are largely based on fantasy and wishful thinking? Are people really that stupid? (Don't answer that, I already know the answer). But it just makes me want to scream. /end rant
Thanks for your attention.
[what?]
is to buy some legislation to outlaw these communistic "free" services so that the for-pay providers can make money, pay taxes, and help the economy (did I miss anything?). Let's get Dan Lyons to write a brilliant article about how the free hot-spots aren't as good as the for-pay ones...
Do you have ESP?
It's all a matter of perspective.
The casino gaming industry talks about its "earnings", not "winnings", or heaven forbid, its customers' "losses".
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
On ebing asked whether they were using wireless or not "26% were unsure which technology they were using". Astonishing! Even my mother knows what wireless. Hell, even my father, who's never used a computer in his life (no exaggeration whatsoever!) could probably guess that if there are no wires coming out of it then it's probably wireless!
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Just noting that the article has a little bias in its phrasing.
This reminds me of a very cool hotspot search engine. Dowza. It lists free and paid hotspots with map, Google ads only.
This numbers game has been played many times.
There's only $12 Billion of lost revenue ONLY if those users would have bought the service otherwise.
This is just like the phone companies saying that they lost Billions in phone revenue because of phreakers. Ummm, they wouldn't have made most of those freebie calls if they weren't free!
Same thing with CD sales. Sorry, but maybe Billions of dollars of music were freely traded with P2P networks but what percentage of those "CDs" that were downloaded would have been bought otherwise? I know I deleted almost all the stuff I listened to but I certainly bought more CD's than before P2P because some of the "guesses" I tried, I liked enough to pay the artists for!
Unfortunately, the lawmakers are clued out so this makes for effective propaganda to get laws passed in favor of these "battered" businesses.
--Business uses statistics like a drunk uses a lampost - more for leaning on than illumination.
Hooray, actually!
Go figure. The needs of people are not being met by the current telco carriers. This is good for us as geeks.
We can kinda see a similar pattern, in the way that the diversity of the technologies available are surpassing the market's ability to keep-up -- and unintended uses start to become a factor in these big market statistics. Old modems were like this at the time of 14.4Kbps and USR's 16.8Kbps HST protocols, as attempts to jam more bits through the same pipe. Then there became digital modems, which would aggregate more modems than the rack at the CompUSA into a single modular rackmount unit. There were different standards later on, and interoperability, manufacturers eventually would conform to whatever standard, and the users would follow.
There are so many different bands of wireless communications in use, the interesting thing about Wi-Fi, 802.11a-z, and bluetooth, is that they are in unlicensed frequencies, which the FCC specifies rules we can follow for operation. Wireless cellular telephone carriers, by contrast, purchase their frequencies, in order to sell us service.
All of these different services operate in different ways, and have their own operating charachteristics. Cellular telephones are generally thought to have continuous coverage, while Wi-Fi, bluetooth, and others are pretty short. The FCC limits the ammout of power that you can emit in these unlicensed bands, so they're generally used for short distances, but might be useful for the last mile.
As we see more and more communication devices using these bands in better and more efficient ways, and as the FCC (at least here in the US) opens-up the frequencies -- allowing us to perform more differnt types of communication, at more different frequencies, and in more ways -- we effectively have the science fiction world of video-phones and and flying cars and little blinkey handheld computers that we read about in science fiction novels and Sci-Fi channel shows.
I think its a good time to be a geek.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
...well it does, doesn't it?!
Firefox &
Of course, I wardrive all the time. It's amazing just how many public hotspots there are at any given time, there's at least 5 on my block, and I'm in Pittsburgh! Of course, I live on the mail drag in my town.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
Even if there was no WiFi, wireless carriers are pricing most data plans at such a level that I am pained to read text email on them, much less browse a single web page with images!
Through some quirk of pricing, the T-Mobile T-Zones plan is not too expensive (a few $) and I can use my bluetooth phone to bring the network to my laptop, seemingly with no extra fees.
If I want to add "web browsing" capability to the phone itself - why that is around $15-$20 a month more!!
In short they are missing hardly any revenue from WiFi, they are missing revenue because people are not idiots and will not pay for something vastly overpriced unless it is just about mandatory.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I interviewed the FBI at SeattleWireless TV, and the agent I talked to said he hadn't seen any attempted attacks. I should probably get an update and post it.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
I spent $10 on a bottle of wine. So should the headline read "Wine purchase costs banana growers $10"?
It's the same logic the RIAA and MPAA use, and it's fallacious.
It's not their money. It's not being taken from them. It's not costing them shit. It's just diverting money they think should be theirs to other, more worthwhile. uses. But there's no real evidence that it ever would have been spent on what they have to sell, rather than saved, or spent on any other thing in the world that can be bought.
These people's sense of entitlement to what they haven't earned is sickening. Bunch of corporate welfare scroungers. Next they'll go whining for the government to seize the money for them.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
I pay $80 a month for unlimited use of Verizon Wireless' BroadbandAccess service. Sure, I could use WiFi options, if they existed in every single place i wanted to use my laptop. You have no idea how nice it is to be able to travel all around the city, and in many cities across the nation, and have an instant 500kbps - 1mbps connection nearly everywhere I go -- even in a moving vehicle. Very sweet!!!
I'm missing out on the chance to pay by the kb over a wireless connection at modem speeds versus getting usually T1 speeds over a hotspot connection for a free or nominal charge?? I feel ripped off... The man holding me down again.. Bastards
So many injustices..so little time..
WOW! GPRS/GSM with WiFi feature really works!
Imagine a cluster-fuck of freeloaders making nearly dirtcheap phone calls from restaurants, sidewalk cafes, coffeehouses anywhere in the world?
Those businesses are sure gonna be making mucho-dinero on the WiFi side (not to mention their regular business as well.)
A great way to simulate the local economy as well. We all know we need more of that, but the cellphone infrastructure-oriented industry vows not to see this happened.
That WiFi-VoIp shall flourish, unless the wireless industry (cellphone-oriented, that is) ogre is going to squash the baby ugly duckling and grind its bones (thru legislation, cheaper business model or dinosaurs-extinction) before WiFi-VoIP gets a chance to emerges into a beautiful swan.
I, for one, welcome the UMA/WiFi-VoIP cellphone overlord (and I hope its FCC chairman).
When you breathe open air, you're breathing communism.
Opportunity knocks. Karma hunts you down.
I have a 100megs connection at home, upgradable to 1Gig for just $2 extra a month, given the chance to set up a free wimax hotspot I would leap at the chance, to be able to sit by the (admittedly shoddy) river and use my home internet connection would be enough value. to leave the access point open would be no extra burden to me.
**** lying is wrong even for sleeping dogs
Commercial WiFi hotspots and open WiFi networks save consumers about $12 billion, says Starategy Analytics.
You've fallen into the cell industry-speak of calling cellphone "wireless". In fact there are a lot more wireless options than cell, as this current discussion illustrates.
And as the cell industry would prefer didn't exist. Which is perhaps why the word "cell" never comes out of the cell industry's mouth. Nope, it's always "wireless" as if they defined it.
Hey, here's another one: "Windows". There's a software vendor that calls its product "Windows" as if there were no other windowing systems out there.
Leave it up to the wireless carriers to come up with pure bullshit. I am sick and tired of the wireless carriers following in the foot steps of the RIAA / MPAA implying free loading or piracy is the reason for their dropping revenue.
I use T-Mobile hotspots for my internet access and phone service since I told verizon to shove it when my line suddenly didn't qualify for DSL. And of course Comcast will sucker you in with a cheap introductory rate, double it and then apply a $10 punishment fee if you don't want cable TV.
Right now I pay $29.95 for my cellular service and 19.95 for my internet access each month. When it's all said and done it's still cheaper than the conventional phone service and DSL I had before I moved. Even though it's kind of a pain to sit in Starbucks to use my internet access, it's still way faster than the DSL I had before (synchronous T-1). But there is an advantage to gawking at the chicks behind the counter.
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
Just at the state level instead:r izon_wireless/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12/01/philly_ve
No sarcasm lost on you!
I'm reading /. on a free wifi hotspot right now.
In a bar, with a beer.
Gotta love it. :)
...more prone to use a cheap WiFi connection, if one is available." Ya think?
What does this button do...
and duh again
I pointed this out elsewhere, but got modded down by the commie mods as 'flamebait'. Irregardless, WiFi and wireless aren't necessarily competing products, so WiFi is actually creating a new market that wireless carriers haven't exploited. Most WiFi is used for electronic messaging, which if you've seen the cost of doing this on cell phones, you'd understand why most people still don't text each other.
I don't have a land phone line so I have an mobile phone with a gprs-110Kbits/sec or gsm-10Kbits/sec(this is the french acronym) modem to connect to the network and am getting an unlimited service to the internet ports http, https, stmp, pop , imap, ftp no ssh or telnet or other service ports also included is 120 hours of wifi access at their sponsored hotspots(and some of them don't work and they are few and far between). I hardly ever use the wifi offer except when I need to get onto the database. This option to my account costs me 120 euros a month (ouch that hurts mister). And now they are offering a third generation protocol gprs2-380Kbits/sec with a nifty pcmia card at 90 euros a month for only 24 hours of connection time included and normally I can get onto a database with this new protocol! (more pain for more speed!). I live in France and I feel that I am getting hosed and I really want that new formule but only 24 hours just doesn't do it. Bend over and branch that cable and forget about your behind! bro telco has it in hand ready to give your the royal service anywhere you have a mobile telephone signal. Who are they trying to kid only businesses and people like me without a fixed phone or home are going to spit out cash like that for this service.
With this third generation protocol they are advertising the video phone call but they just don't mention the prices on the television ad.
This is a test!
This is par for the course these days. I think this is simply a symptom of people thinking internet access is not worth what the providers are charging for it. I would love to have my own connection at home, but I am not willing to pay $60 a month for it.
This is just like the music industry. I think people prefer having the real copies of the CDs that they like. The problem is most CDs have one or two tracks that are worth anything, and they are too expensive.
Sig free since 2/6/2002