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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
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.
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
Obviously completely incorrect because people will use it A LOT at the lower price, and almost NOT AT ALL at the higher price. Smells like RIAA and MPAA maths to me.
In Soviet Russia the insensitive clod is YOU!
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!
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?
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".
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.
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
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.
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."
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
This reminds me of a very cool hotspot search engine. Dowza. It lists free and paid hotspots with map, Google ads only.
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