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The Case for Free WiFi?
lgreco writes "Recently I was trying to convince a business man who is about to open an Internet Cafe, to provide WiFi at no charge. I argued about increased business and royalty and proposed that the infrastructure cost these days is reasonable and the recurring cost, along with the amortized payoff of the initial investment, can be recovered by adding a few cents to each beverage, etc. In spite of the numerous discussions on the merits of free WiFi v. paid at coffee shops, restaurants, etc, I was interested in hearing what do you think about the issue and if there are solid examples of successful businesses that offered free WiFi." If you were going to argue for or against this issue, what arguments would you use?
"A lot of proprietors seem to be concerned about the maintenance issue. Not so much about the hardware maintenance than software: auditing etc. Some are also concerned about legal ramifications if their customers are caught downloading music or movies illegally.
I am not aware of any Internet cafe or similar business that got hit by our beloved RIAA but what if their lawyers subpoena a small proprietor for download records? If you are running a shoestring infrastructure with a cable modem with an Airport base station what kind of logs could you possibly proviide? If a kid walks in for a lemonade and starts downloading porn what do you tell the parents when they sent their lawyer to pay you a visit?
It would seem that if you let a provider offer the WiFi service at your place of business for a fee, they can deal with liabilities, maintenance etc, so this is one less thing to worry about when setting up the business. Yet expecting your customers to pay $6-$10/hr for WiFi is so ridiculous and such a turn off for them."
I am not aware of any Internet cafe or similar business that got hit by our beloved RIAA but what if their lawyers subpoena a small proprietor for download records? If you are running a shoestring infrastructure with a cable modem with an Airport base station what kind of logs could you possibly proviide? If a kid walks in for a lemonade and starts downloading porn what do you tell the parents when they sent their lawyer to pay you a visit?
It would seem that if you let a provider offer the WiFi service at your place of business for a fee, they can deal with liabilities, maintenance etc, so this is one less thing to worry about when setting up the business. Yet expecting your customers to pay $6-$10/hr for WiFi is so ridiculous and such a turn off for them."
I was interested in hearing what do you think about the issue and if there are solid examples of successful businesses that offered free WiFi.
Panera has the largest (or one of) free wifi network out there.
... then what is the difference between if the customers have free access to wired terminals, or if there is free WiFi?
A couple of points RE: potential liabilities.
Maybe you should card customers before allowing them to use the WiFi. This would at least make it so that you didn't have to worry about the very touchy subject of minors accessing adult material.
One solution might be to secure the network with WEP and hand out the key to people who identified themselves and signed an EULA.
Parental controls could be used, but that might be inadvisable because once you start filtering, you may take on legal responsibilities.
All-in-all, I don't see a compelling argument for it that would outweigh the potential legal ramifications in our litigious society.
You got any karma man? I really neeed it. Just a little hit! Come on!
I do remember a coffee shop discontinuing free WiFi on the weekends due to people coming in, using the WiFi, hijacking tables, and not buying anything. http://wifinetnews.com/archives/005325.html http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/26/234225 6
I'd suggest "free WiFi with purchase". Buy something and a WiFi access code is printed on your receipt good for an hour or two. The customers get what they want and the freeloaders can go else where.
Granted, it is a slight hassle for the paying customer, and I'm sure dedicated freeloaders will dig through trash to find half-used access codes (or eventually figure out how you're generating codes), but it's still better than smelly nerds hogging tables for head-to-head D&D play over the access point.
Free of Flash! Free of Flash!
Wouldn't it be possible that people would come and use the free Wi-Fi instead of coming and paying to use the desktop computers?
There's no place like localhost
The owner initially set-up a "pay as you go" internet connection, where you could either use his computers, or he'd give you a temporary username/ password to access his wireless router. Initially, this worked well for him, as he was the first Coffeeshop in the area to offer internet access. As time went on and other Coffeeshop's started to offer "free" internet (to draw in people), I noticed the volume of people diminished. At that point he made the decision to offer "free" internet for those with wireless laptops, yet continued to charge if you opted to use his computers. I personally feel with all the free WiFi Access Points you're going to have a hard time finding someone who will pay.
One thing to keep in mind if you decide to offer "free" internet is you're going to get people who campout on their laptops and take up table space for hours at a time. Some people even stay there all damn day like it's their personal office space. This might lend itself to loss of business from patrons just wanting a quick cappuccino or dessert and having no seats available. I'd make sure to designate certain tables with time limits or as "No Internet." Good luck!
"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
Well, the prospective place of business would have more people loitering outside getting free wireless at least!
I'm thinking about 2 sources of liabilities:
1) users.
2) his bandwidth provider
Why should everybody pay for something a few use?
"I argued about increased business and royalty"
Wait...so you mean to tell me that if I give out free wi-fi, the queen will show up?
Keen gear!
porn arguement wins
If you're going to try to convince someone to offer free WiFi, make sure they know that they might be liable for things customers use it for if they don't take the proper steps beforehand.
You can setup a proxy server which will intercept http: traffic and insert ad banners into the web pages it serves.
Wi-Fi and Coffee shops don't always mix. Sure it works for big chains like starbucks. But sometimes people want to get coffee and get away from work for a while. Also there is the issue of people just sitting their and no drinking coffee and just working. So if you are going to have a coffee shop with Wi-Fi you probably need an informal so many drinks an hour or please get out. Also if people come for the Wi-Fi if the connection goes down. The guy looses buisness.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I'd get my wife to argue with him. Somehow she won the arguement to delete WoW from my hd.
Valkyrie is about to die! Wizard needs food -- badly!
Is a coffee shop going to be held accountable if somebody sells drugs using the public phone next to the bathroom? Or discusses an illegal business deal at of their tables? Of course not, so why should they be help responsible for what people do over their Internet connection?
I have a friend who runs a bagel shop (coffee, sandwiches, bagels, etc...). He is moving to a larger location in order to provide free WiFi. The reason hes moving is because he experimented with WiFi before, and his old building was not big enough to accommodate all the extra buisness he recived when providing free WiFi. That to me sounds like a huge reason to provide free WiFi over paid. Ossus
unless you really enforce that people buy drinks while they're there. It may not be so bad once WiFi is ubiquitous, but as it is, frugal people (ie people that won't want to pay for drinks) will flock to wherever has it.
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Panera Bread offers free WiFi.
http://www.panerabread.com/locations.aspx?WiFi=1
They seem to be doing fine. The big companies like the RIAA and MPAA like to go after the little guy who cannot defend himself in court because of the costs. If they ever challenged a company that can defend itself they might lose.
In my town, we have free Wifi at Panera Bread and about 5 crappy little cafes.
How about instead of Wifi you just get up and go ask her out instead of watching her and pretending she's hotibunni27 on your IM?
I think one of the biggest problems would be people who take up space just to use the free internet, but don't actualy buy anything.
It sounds like you want to use logic to win an argument. In my time on this planet, I've found that never works. You can try your hardest, then just let him do it his own way. Once he finds that customers are turned off by being treated like a criminal, he'll do it the Panera way.
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Charge for the Wi-Fi and make the beer free.
you buy a cup of coffee, and on your receipt is a number which allows you to login to wifi for 8 hours or something like that. the number is some sort of hash based on time/date (among other things) so it's not prone to abuse
Charging would not alleviate any liability that you mention, and would actually add more. By receiving money, they now have a vested interest in the actions of the customers and are more responsible than if it were free.
While it's practically painless to set up these days, a big argument against WiFi in any business is the type of client you attract.
Remember that you're likely to attract businessy types too busy to do anything but work during lunch, or student/cheap types too cheap to pay for highspeed access themselves (and therefore, unlikely to spend $30 a month on coffee). Is this really the atmosphere you want in your business?
It also depends what type of netcafe you're opening. There are netcafes primarily for gaming, and those primarily for getting a cup of coffee while surfing the net. I've worked in one where people are basically gaming straight up, and the atmosphere is radically different than the local coffee shop.
If you want a social, living coffeeshop, I'd say cut off the internet access. People go to a coffeeshop to relax with friends, listen to jazz, or curl up in a comfy chair with a big book. As much of a netaholic as I am, there has to be a balance somewhere.
My concern is how to handle the freeloaders who spend 6 hours in your shop using your internet, yet only paying for one cup of coffee.
I like the idea of free WiFi. Having to pay for WiFi may discouage some customers from even going into the cafe. As was stated in the comment, raising the price of items in the store a few cents to pay for the initial cost isnt a bad idea. The more customers that go into the store...the more likely they will be to buy something...
The place is always filled with people, but I've noticed that very few of them have had anything other than a drink. I think Starbucks, Borders, etc., use T-Mobile or some other pay service for that reason.
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
Step 1: Provide free WiFi. ...
Step 2:
Step 3: Profit!
Isn't that what outsourcing the Wifi is for? That way the outsourced company can handle the liability issue, gets paid by the business, the business can offer for free, and both reap the benefits.
Okay, I think this betrays a lack of understanding about business - people are in business to make money - not provide you with something for free.
Places that have offered free WiFi have had people leeching it all day and not buying a thing - its why cafes don't do it anymore.
What? Marriot doesn't even get away with prices like that. There's a coffee shop down the street that's going to profit from his pricing scheme...
If he's concerned with freeloaders, have the cash register print out a code on the receipt that you can enter into a nocat captive portal to authenticate against a RADIUS server. Give them an hour for each purchase, for instance. Tie the code to single MAC address, etc.
But consider the cost of integrating your cash register, running the server, dealing with the tech support, etc. vs. the cost of sticking a WRT54G on a wire and letting a few freeloaders on the 'net.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
btw whats the name of the cyber cafe? hmmm makes me want park my car infront of your cyber cafe with my wireless enabled desktop on a power inverter ;)
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Im in still in High School and during the lasts 2 weeks of the semester I pratically lived at starbuchs. I was very suprised that they did not have free internet and it upset me very much, I love the idea of a coffee shop with free internet, even if it is added into the price of the coffee :)
to access their WiFi you have to click on a EULA, which probably has the usual legal crap about copyrighted material.
Sounds like a start.
Another issue is that people who do this do not add anything to the attractivness of the business as a social gathering place.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
In the Adams Morgan neighborhood of DC, there's a coffee shop called "Tryst" (I like them, so I won't post a link here. Poor guys would get slashdotted into oblivion!) that has free wifi. Now, Adams Morgan is NOT a cheap place to have a business, and Tryst is simply huge. The place is full of sofas, loveseats and easy chairs...not a single mass-produced cafe chair can be found in the place, in all truth, so it actually has a relatively low density as far as customers per square foot. They do solid business, though, because they are reknowned as a great place for students, consultants, etc. to work. Go in there at night, and it's social. But go there during the middle of the day, and it's STILL busy, and looking like a forest of laptops. The people take advantage of the free wifi, and they buy coffee, beer, and food at the same time. I used to live mere blocks from them, and actually wrote most of my book in some of those comfortable chairs while racking up a tab consisting of caffeine and beer in alternating amounts. The place has this incredible buzz to it that makes it perfect to work in, and this in turn is the key to their being busy all day long, every day.
There's a flipside to this, though. It's no secret that in some cases, coffee shops that offer free wifi end up with nothing more than wifi freeloaders, who go in, power up and sit down to work without ordering a thing. I honestly don't know how the flip comes about, but Tryst doesn't do anything to require that people purchase, it just takes care of itself. Part of it could be the quality of their food and drink...their coffee is just unbelievable. It's Seattle-good, to put it as a couple of my friends from there did.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
increased business and royalty
... don't want them ... you'd have a never-ending smell of wet paint around the place.
Nah
It costs more to charge for wifi than wifi is worth.
I recently ate at a Country Kitchen in order to get free WiFi. That's right, a Country Kitchen. Obviously, free WiFi brings in customers.
A post a while back in boing boing (http://www.boingboing.net/2003/07/27/wifi_is_too_ expensiv.html)
noted that the added cost of administering and accounting for a pay wifi site ($30) versus a free site ($6) made the profit very difficult. In comparison a free site was cheap enough to easily make a net profit from the increased traffic it drew.
So simply show then the money.
I hate to rain on the free parade. Lord knows I've used free wifi a lot. I even leave my home access point open to help anyone in the neighborhood. But I think free wifi has ruined my favorite coffee shop. It turned everyone into a bunch of droids with their eyes glued to the screen. The place is like a branch office for telecommuters, not a hip, fun place to relax. And I can see why the management is a bit peeved. Many folks don't consume much more than one cup of coffee every few hours. (And it's a good thing too. People would be overweight and overcaffeinated.) I would rather have a place with reasonable prices for food and beverage. We don't need that many calories in the day. It's silly to tie calorie/caffeine consumption to WiFi. Keep the world Orthogonal!!!
O'Briens Pub in San Diego
They have a great beer selection and the food is pretty good too. That brings in most of the customers. I and a few friends have often decided that we were going to "work" from there and used the free wi-fi and our VPN connections. I can guarantee you that Tom's (the owner) investment has more than paid for itself.
If you're in the San Diego area you should stop in.
Kneel before Sig!
Free Wifi, with paid computer rentals, is advertising for a restaurant or hotel or other business. It should be looked upon as such.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I work in a computer store that offers free Wi-Fi along with free Internet Access on our demo computers. In my opinion, what end up with is increased traffic, but mainly for the sole purpose of taking advantage of the free internet access. In terms of Wi-Fi, most people just sit outside our store to use it, without even stepping inside once. In my opinion, the amount of traffic your store will have will increase dramatically, but in terms of actually sales, there will probably not be much increase. In fact, the increased traffic may even be a detriment. The more people in the store, the less likely someone will be able to be serviced or helped or comfortable. If the store is filled up with people who are just there for the free Internet Access, it will be that much harder for real customers to be helped or make purchases.
He's running an internet café, so his principle business is presumably selling computer usage. This is not a coffee shop where the money is made in keeping a steady stream of customers around to pay $3/cup.
I assume this guy is probably planning to sell snacks/drinks/coffee to bolster his bottom line, but let's not forget that his business is not a coffee shop. Approaching this like Panera Bread or even the local mom and pop coffee place isn't necessarily the most intelligent way to go.
Additionally, I sincerely hope this guy isn't trying to setup a true internet café in the US, as I've only seen a few that were successful. Unless you're in a high-traffic area of a major tourist locale, I've only seen gaming centers and the like last longer than a year or so. Don't take that as gospel truth or anything, it's just been my (admittedly limited) experience.
Can the cost be recovered? Sure, that's not tough at all, and most people don't notice the difference between a $1.29 or $1.59 fountain drink. Will it drive business, though? That's the real question: should he give away wi-fi when his core business is selling internet access (and a computer with which to use it). Wouldn't a reduced rate be more feasible?
If you come at my cafe and hack pentagon from it, who will be charged ?
Will I be able to have a secure system that prevents hacking of my system ? Will I know how to log and protect my logs to cover myself in case someone sue me ?
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
I argued about increased business and royalty and proposed that the infrastructure cost these days is reasonable Lemme get this straight - You put in WiFi and suddenly royalty wants to patronize your coffee shop? Who knew the Queen Mum was into wireless? Is she a java junky and the whole tea thing is just for the tourists? Hell, she's probably lurking on Shashdot as we speak, waiting to drag out some "In Soviet Russia..." cliche.
Case in point. I am here almost every day of the week. I spend around $500 a month here. I work from the cafe because of their wireless. If they didn't have it, I wouldn' be here blowing $15 a day on food and drinks. $6000 a year at the cafe. Office away from home. Works for me.
2 of them here in Macon, GA. Both of them have had free Wi-fi for awhile. They often get lots of students
The kickbacks they could get from the mob for leaving the WiFi network unencrypted would easily offset the startup costs.
If one of the wireless users is sharing movies and crap, there is a distinct possibility that the MPAA will notify the ISP. The ISP is then legally required to either get rid of the file from the user's machine, or *shut off* that user. Which means the coffee shops access will be killed by the ISP.
Major hassle. Not to mention that the coffee shop will basically be an ISP. There will be users screwing the local network up with viruses, users who can't figure out how to get on and want help...all of which requires somebody who knows the tech side to keep things running well.
Not worth the trouble. AT ALL.
A friend of mine opened a small coffee shop here in town and for every cup of coffee you get 1/2 hour of access for free. On the reciept there is an access code for the account created for your cup of coffee, that expires after a half hour. You can extend that time by buying another cup of coffee and getting more credit, or purchasing more time.
The biggest problem he found when he first installed his system was squaters. People who bought one cup of coffee and sat there for an hour or more without purchasing anything more. It made is table space really inefficient and cut into his profits very noticably. Maybe it won't be a problem for a shop that doesn't fill completely up often, but volume is the name of the game anything that hurts volume is bad.
we have free wiFi but we have a lot of freeloaders (students) at the weekend who buy nothing (or 1 coffee per table of 5)
so to stop this are there any easy (free/simple) software we can run (Win2k/XP/*nix:we are _not_ linux gurus) that can give access to patrons for determined times (say 2 hours with purchase of a coffee, buy another cofee and access is restored from the till) to stop the majority of freeloaders sucking our bandwidth
as always with free things its the minority or spoil and absue it for the majority and we wouldnt want to discontinue it because of jerks
thanks
James H
Orange Cafe
Croydon, UK
As to the liability, use a redirect gateway, with an end user agreement click through.
You can be sued for anything, the eua goes a good distance to showing due diligence.
Argument for: The control systems and maintenance required to make sure people are paying for their WiFi connection probably cost more than any additional revenue you can get from it. I know if I had a laptop, I'd keep looking until I found a place with open access, just to avoid the hassle.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
World Cup in Portland has free WiFi. The last time I checked, they were doing OK. They have two locations (that I know of). Both are downtown. One of a coffee shop and the other is the coffee shop inside Powell's main downtown location.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
The choices aren't just free or not free.
...). I try to buy drinks at the places that give it, and recommend them to friends tho, so I guess it does work in growing their customer base. And I am a customer, so it's not a total loss.
The real choice is:
Free - this works best for a destination place, where you don't have competitors within easy range, as people will tend to congregate where the signal is strongest, and people with WiFi laptops and Blackberries and such tend to be willing to spend money where they hang out.
Almost Free - secure with a password that changes that you get when you shop there, or with a subscription you renew periodically. Then you can nurse a drink along or you can not, but it's less of a hassle to maintain. This works where you have many competitors at close range with equal signal strength, and you just change it once a week or so - so the WiFi for free guys will either ask their friend for the password or buy a drink once in a while, but the overhead is low. Still a nuisance tho. Gathering places should be easy to get to, which is why many cafes are near parks and water/green places. Also works for bookstores - you get a quarterly card or annual card as a member and everyone has the same password but it's on the card so easy to maintain.
Pay Per Drink - works for terminals but such a hassle for WiFi laptops that people will get angry at you and go buy drinks at your competitor.
Pay Big Time - hourly charges, secure networks, where you offer a WiFi provider portal at your site but they basically buy service from them - good for things like Starbucks where all the chain stores have the same exact setup and same provider, but still a pain and the price upsets people who would otherwise hang out and drink your coffee drinks that cost too much.
Free works best, IMHO. But that's cause I live near three places that provide it, so I don't pay for WiFi at home (have DSL and Cablemodem but rarely use them
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
My argument would be simple:
Why make it free when 90% of people would pay $1/day for it?
Maybe if you have regulars, you could offer discounts, like $0.25/day, but the idea here is just like with music downloads: people will pay for it, just not a lot.
Don't become a regular here, you will become retarded. -- Yoda the Retard
Peace
In this case, the retailer thinks he's going to do well reselling internet access. Giving it away for free doesn't really fit into his business plan.
./'s. Set up cable/dsl account, connect wireless access point and be on your way. But it's a black art to many, especially someone focused on selling coffee.
I'm guessing the guy isn't technically savvy either if you had to explain the whole wireless thing to him.
Other Retailers:
The average coffee retailer may not be so sophisticated as to understand loss-leader pricing. Loss-leading is a financial disaster if it isn't executed well. This might lead to the camping-out characters.
It seems simple to most
OT Panera
We have a Panera and a Starbucks near us. If I'm not mistaken, you still pay for access at starbucks and that place has people with laptops in it all the time. Meanwhile panera has a couple of laptop users now and again, but is otherwise busy with people buying food. That's what Panera had in mind and I'd like to know how they execute that to keep it that way.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
sitting outside of a wifi cafe right now....accross the street that is ;)
great idea but we (those who work in coffee shops) dont want to be compiling kernels
how could we achieve that very idea of yours for easy/cheap ?
...is this busniess in Japan?
All it takes is a few dedicated free loaders to make it not worth it for most coffee shops. Starbucks, Panera, our local chain called the Daily Grind and others don't mind people coming in and sitting down for a few hours if they buy at least something modest there, but the people you have to worry about are the cheapskates that buy nothing and still mooch off the wifi.
I would have no problem paying $1-$2 for a few hours of access on top of buying an espresso drink, and I can't really say that our local Starbucks' (yeah we have only 1, inside a B&N store) policy of charging $4 for 2 hours of access is unreasonable. The service is good, AFAIK unrestricted and pretty fast. Panera's is free, but it is slow as hell around here and it's filtered to an unacceptable degree. I couldn't even post blog updates because apparently my blog got listed as a porn site by their filter vendor. I know their reasons, and don't fault them, but for-pay wifi IMO is the way to go.
I see free loaders at our Starbucks all the time because I see other college students going there to study and not buying anything. They go there just because they like the atmosphere, but guess what people? Starbucks needs to make money in order to provide you with that. The least you can do is drop them a few bucks here that there. Don't give me that poor college student routine either. Most of the college students out there can afford $3 for a drink here and there. My family is now probably no more than half, probably closer to 1/3 or 1/4 as rich as most of the families that send their kids to our college. I have to work during the summer and year to pay for my expenses and even I can afford to pay my way when I go to Starbucks. Sell off that new Chevy Suburban or BMW that mumsy and daddykins bought you, if that's what it takes.
It's the same problem with file sharing. Most of the people I knew that were into it hardcore were people from richer families where they had the income to buy the music and movies. Ironically, it's usually the working class students and middle rung middle class students like myself and some others I know that actually pay consistently for such things. In fact, the people with the largest bootleg IP collections I've seen at college, tend to drive very expensive cars and have great apartments that they couldn't possibly pay for on their own without a lot of assitance from their parents.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
There's a lot of coffee shops around me ( Washington DC ) which have pay wireless access. I've never felt the need to do so -- even though 90% of the time I spend working on my personal programming projects is done in coffee shops in the morning before work, and internet access would be helpful ( looking up documentation, etc ).
What I've done, instead, is ride my bike around to find coffee shops which either provide free access, or which are near or beneath offices with "default" or "linksys" WAPs without passwords.
In fact, it's gotten to the point that I know off the top of my head about a half-dozen free WAPs in my area which I can use. I see no reason to pay for access when I can just ride my bike down the street to a place where the inept sysadmins don't know any better.
In fact, at one of these coffee shops, ( Caribou Coffee, Pennsyvania Ave & 17th ) there was at one point so many unsecured WAPs that I had to use the "Air Traffic Control" Dashboard widget to select the one I wanted, since there were, literally, four WAPs named "linksys" running on ( I think ) channel 11. The Airport menu bar selector didn't work very well in that situation.
Charging for wireless is basically a fool's errand. Few will use it, and, I have to assume, you'll be lucky to make up the outlay for the service, unless you roll your own billing machanism.
lorem ipsum, dolor sit amet
For wireless (and internet in general) we are currently in a mostly toll-road type of system. You pay to get on at home, and you pay to get on at the coffee shop.
Some stores, offer free internet to customers, because it is relativly inexpensive, draws customers in, and differentiates them from the competition.
Some cities are starting to offer free internet for the same reasons. It is relativly inexpensive to offer, and draws the interests of potiental residents and businesses. This is similar to why a city would provide paved roads. Except that roads are much more expensive to maintain. Of course, the companies that offer the info-toll-roads (phone/cable/cell companies) are against such a public good, as it would mean the end of much of their business.
"This new information super highway should not be a toll road" -Al Gore.
I see a lot of "squatters" at Starbucks, Beaners, Panera, etc that will sip a single $2.00 coffee for 3 hours just to sit there and surf the net.
I think a system that worked like the gas-station car wash would be best. With every purchase (or every $8.00 spent) you get a code worth 1 hour of access time.
-This sig intentionally left blank
I have to plug Panera Bread for their free WiFi. /.!), I made the trip a couple of miles to a Panera(Ok, St.Louis Bread in the STL area) and got lunch here BECAUSE OF THIS ADDED SERVICE.
Why? Because I am currently sitting in one of their locations in St.Charles, MO using their FREE WiFi connection!
Why did I choose Panera when I could have tried to find another, closer hotspot? Because I knew that they have free WiFi(thanks,
I don't think that I am the minority here, either!
It's really nice to know when I am traveling, I can get online at a Panera Bread. Plus, I don't think twice about buying something while I am here. It's just the right thing to do.
-- Now more the mirth, scrape here in the face...
Our local shop in the East-Cleveland, OH area is Java John's at http://www.javajohns.com/. It's a very cool setup with free WiFi and great coffee. It's in a lower-income area of town so it hasn't benefitted from the yuppies stopping in all the time.
Hopefully it won't go out of a business - it's a very cool place.
Offer free WiFi but put meters on the electrical outlets. That limits customers to the battery life of their laptops, generally a couple hours.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
if the business fears legal ramifications then they can put a little sign on the door saying "We're not responsible for the actions of our users we just provide free access" i mean say terrorists use the wifi spot to crack the fbi datatbase, the feds go to the manager, all the manager has to say is read the sign. I mean the little sign on the door gives laundromats licenses to steal, so i dont see why it wouldnt clear a business of legal responsibilities in this case.
Use a login system that makes everyone fill in their name and telephone number when they first attempt to connect to the 'Net from the shop. When the name and tel are submitted, the script gets the IP address, connects it to a MAC address and puts it in a database.
From there, have all traffic in or out be logged. The traffic won't be that high, really. Set up a spare box with a Dual-Layer DVD burner and a nice sized hard drive to hold the logs. Burn stuff off any time you have the 9.5 GB (or however big DLDVDs are). I highly doubt you'll burn off more than one CD a week unless you get some serious traffic.
If things come back to you in a lawsuit (be it a subpoena or even someone looking for evidence), you've got your logs. If someone falsifed information, they've committed a crime of a different kind - one for which you can't be responsible.
Wait, did I just describe a simplified version of NoCatAuth?
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Seems like a pretty good solution to me for those out there that are worried about lost revenue. (The possibility for someone to do something illegal, however is another matter.)
Overall I would say that it depends on the area that the coffee shop is in and what sort of customers the owner is hoping to attract. I say that kids in general will appreciate the wireless access but will most likely ignore it or abuse it. Business customers would definately use it and would appreciate it, but there comes a point when they will start to abuse it.
My idea would be to set up something like a nocat http://nocat.net/ setup and base the autentication on something that can be added to the receipt. Obviously not 1,2,3,4 but some random number generator or something. I leave that up to your imagination, because it would be simple or hard depending on your implemenetation of a cash register. Give each number an expiration of a certain time. You can only log on from that time on of issueance of the passkey. So I buy my Latte, on the receipt is my passkey. Use it or loose it. Heck you could vary the expiration time based on traffic.
I would also hang a sign that gave some general guidelines. No illegal activity, nothing indecent, no taking others Internet time.... And put something to the effect that violators will be banned. Physically and by mac addresss (well I wouldn't put that in the sign.)
Other than that, I would block all traffic except web. Secure administration policies, and no access to the equipment by the beverage servers.
That's all I have.
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It's a common policy of many coffeeshops I know of to have minimum purchase requirements. Even before the times of Wifi, cool coffeeshops were where a lot of the young and broke kids would hang out. Invariably they'd try to get away with buying a small cup of coffee then lingering for 3 hours.
The problem with codes or any sort of regulation of the access is that it creates a support problem. So you're slinging coffee and somebody gets a code that doesn't work. Now you have to take time away from making coffee and worry about tech support. It doesn't take too many things like that to screw up the cost/benefit of it. Does your barista know how to fix a WiFi network? Probably not.
Free WiFi became a popular concept because people don't demand much from a free service. If they log on and it doesn't work or it's slow they won't complain because they didn't pay for it. Those who can cope with it will use it and be happy, those who can't don't become a burden to you.
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They have 'cafe accounts'. Basically it's X amount of free access per 24 hours. The first login is a redirect to whatever page you want, and with a little code fragment on there someone can turn on WiFi outside of the walled garden. Their default built-in page only works with IE but the code fragment is browser-agnostic.
... if people want to freeload, they can, just only for X amount of time per day. We're setting it up so that people can also sign up for full-day or full-month unlimited access at a reasonable rate. Put in your CC# on our walled garden server, set your username, get a password, and you've got instant access for however many days you bought.
Anyway, seems like a reasonable solution
Some people have a hard time with "giving (it) away" but when they try charging for (it) they end up spending a fortune on lockdown tools, auditing, system maintenance, cashier time, customer delays getting coffee, etc. Never mind the good/ill will issue, it's just difficult to justify at a basic cost-of-doing-business level.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
The main reason not to offer free WiFi is to avoid leachers. You know, the type that will come in, buy hardly anything, use the connection for hours, all while tying up a table a paying customer could be using.
I'd recommend a "free" connection tied to a minimum purchase price with a maximum time limit. That'd keep real customers happy and get rid of the leaches.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Bandwidth and the number of tables on which one can set a laptop and comfortable use the WiFi access are limited and therefore become a commodity. Any scheme you can think of to mitigate these issues always comes down to deciding who gets bandwidth and for how long (including the usage of a table). Because of this, there is no way WiFi provided by a restaurant using 802.11 technologies can ever be considered free. There is always a cost to be paid somewhere. If the business just set-up an unencrypted network, then the establishment would be flooded with squatters. Even paying customers would sometimes stay longer than usual without purchasing anything. Various schemes I read in other posts merely attempt to redirect these costs but they simply just change the market a little bit. In the end, price is the only way to balance out the supply demand imbalance when you are dealing with the limited bandwidth and range of 802.11.
Given that WiFi using people are mostly male geeks, it's going to turn the business and the surrounding area into a "sausage fest".
And don't get me started on the other female repellent attributes...
Really, the case is quite simple. If you charge for WiFi Internet access, I will not patronize your business. Why would I pay for a service provided free elsewhere ?
:wq
That's what I did. The local pub had business Internet access, but was totally neutral whether or not he provided wireless access to his customers. He just didn't want the headache of setting it up or running it. So I purchased a nice cheap 802.11g access point for about $45 from the web about 15 months ago. I just gave it to the pub owner. I set it up, gave it an easy-to-remember WEP code, and that was that. He has never needed to worry about it at all since then. I have had free access there for 15 months now, so that comes out to $3/month for me, and $0 for everyone else. With the occasional beer someone buys me in thanks, I have come out way ahead.
Well if you are providing WiFi and not computers there isn't alot they could do. Who provided the laptop w/wireless capability? If you are just providing a connection with a wireless modem. I don't see an issue. You agree to let the ISP give the RIAA/MPAA any logs and give them your ISP's phone number. Whether the ISP actually releases the logs is not your concern, you are being helpful. The RIAA isn't gonna waste money on trying to sue you unless they think you are trying to 'protect' someone or promote illegal use. Also many wireless routers have a built in firewall, just make the attempt to block standard p2p ports and you have a pretty good case your not promoting illegal copyright infringement.
Advertising, perhaps you have heard of it? You pay for TV for everyone in exchange some people will watch your 30 second ad and then buy the product. Are the people that watch the ad but don't buy the product freeloading?
No. They have been exposed to your product, as you desired, and choose not to purchase it. Same thing with free wifi. Your Free WiFi is an advertisement. I am not talking about advertising the WiFi, I am talking about the 'freeloaders' you don't like.
They are in your shop, useing your tables, see your food, smell your coffee, etc. etc. If you can't convince people SPENDING THEIR TIME INSIDE THE SHOP to buy your product, then your business sucks and you will go out of business no matter what you do.
Liability issues make more sense, but only because the business owners don't understand the legal issues so they are spooking about things that are not really scary.
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For the following reason: cafes have limited seating / serving space, and therefore depend on turnaround for profits. So unless you have table service (which is an expense most small cafes don't have) pestering you to stop loitering, you are gonna have to be the bad cop and roust loiterers yourself.
Or, which IMHO is the right choice, implement a system that prints, say, short passphrases on receipts that offer, say, 15 minutes of access per purchase. When your lease expires and you're prompted to login for access to the network, just buy more stuff and get another receipt. I'll be damned if this couldn't be done with an opensource POS solution coupled with a suitably hacked linksys.
Tedious, yes, but less so than going out of business from all the non-coffee-drinking limpets out there...
The best way to convince him to do it for free is to take a linksys or other generic access point, configure it as wide open (leave the name "linksys") and plug it into your inverter attached to the cigarette lighter in your car. Park outside the cafe in question, turn on you access point and go inside with your WiFi laptop. Show him how pointless it is to try to charge for wireless when there's a least one other free acess point already in his neighborhood.
Seriously, it's only a matter of time until this is legitimately true - he'll only be deluding himself, and hurting his business plan if he counts on a wireless revenue stream.
Everything on the internet is free as it is.. You can get free internet access at libraries.. It should simply be offered as means of convenience.. It would easily attract customers, as long as you promote it.. But you should also have some kinda of "log book" that logs each person who comes in and uses the net.. because people could get away with "trading child porn" or other means of anonymous surfing.. hrmm.. i don't know.. running myself in circles here haha..
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I would imagine a bar code printed on the original receipt that is tied to a MAC address (have to get it off the laptop... somehow) And everytime a drink or product is [re]ordered use a bar code reader to reactiveate tthe MAC for an hour. You can even let the user keep the recipt to aviod asking for the MAC address every day. Your wait staff enforce it by manually scanning the bar code.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
The internet cafe that was near me until it was shutdown for a campus expansion drew both types of people you refer too. The key was to seperate the gamers from the emo kids.
The quake faithul were banished to the basement of the place. Down there they had free access as well as 12-15 computer gaming stations setup on a pay to play basis. The place was built on a hill the basement had its own back entrance.
The hipsters stayed upstairs comparing horn rim thicknesses.
This reminds me of a time before wifi when I would go to a coffee shop at night that hosted some of the best bands in the local music scene. They would charge a low cover, hoping to make it up in bar sales. The majority of the young (pre-high/highschool) kids would go in and only ask for water, which was tap water on ice in glasses) and they would continue to linger.
One evening they switched to bottled water.
Now when a kid ordered water they got a $2.00 bottle of water instead of the free glass. Needles to say, the crowds dissapated a bit and atmosphere in the place improved as well. And the shop made more money than before.
So my opinion is to remember you are running a businness. Do what you need to do to have a quality product, provide a reason for people to be there in the first place, but don't ignore what will keep you in busineess. Freeloaders will not keep you in business.
An easy way to keep people from staying for more than a couple of hours is to not provide power outlets at the tables intended for laptop users. Short of somebody coming in with a fully charged spare battery or two, most laptops will chew through the battery in a couple of hours. Some will last longer but most won't.
You'll find this is true at the larger free wifi providers like Panera. You can use their wifi for only as long as your battery holds out at which point you can still sit and stare at a blank screen if you so desire.
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I really don't get the motivation for free internet unless you're in a highly competitive area where you're fighting for every customer. If that's the environment why are you opening a café there. If on the other hand there is a wealth of customers your main focus has to be turn around. Certainly you don't want to discourage customers from hanging around but you don't really want to encourage them either with free services.
Why not offer the reverse for those who do want a drink or two but really just want a place to use their laptop. Ie charge them an hourly rate for the internet but while they are their you keep them comfortable and offer them free pop and coffee (and maybe discounted machiatos)?
I've always wondered why Linksys & other hardware providers don't just offer a plug-in to enable 'fee'-based services. You could sign up at a location and freely move from one hot spot to another. It would be admined from the machine itself. Individuals could then open their hotspots the same way. They'd get some credit for usage.
Seems obvious to me. Anyone want to form a company to do this?
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Why not vote libertarian and make some sort of difference instead of voting for the republikrats, who are both the same side of the same coin. Either of the two major parties just fight over the same bone, and still screw us out of our money and work... lets oust them and make a difference then?
(Bush or Kerry would've been equally bad... bush got us in this shit, might as well let the idiot run the gamut and fuck us completely till 2008, I pity the sucker that follows the moron, since he or she will be doing MASSIVE cleanup duty both economically and politically.)
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In regards to a cybercafe... I've war walked with a wireless PDA before, and I can promise you that it is VERY easy to steal bandwidth. This is the biggest concern. I can hook up my laptop and hang around in a parking lot or in a neighboring parkinglot and steal your shop's bandwidth. Not that I'll do it, but it CAN be done and WILL be done by some kid too unhappy with his parents keeping dialup or forcing him to watch christian videos instead of the kinky porn he wants to see. And if that kid has a wireless laptop, you're not going to stop him, not even with WEP.
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If you have infinite tables, Free Services are great, and often better than metered services, because metering is a pain.
But you don't have infinite tables, and somebody sitting on your wifi for an hour with a cup of coffee might be LOOSING you money.
If I could wave a wand and create whatever system I wanted I would have BOTH. This way you get to have the best of both worlds.
A free system that had capped bandwidth (50k, perhaps) and was turned off during periods of peak patronage of the cafe. You start out with a sign that says "may be turned off during peak hours" - and then you turn it off whenever you're getting too full.
A paid system that doesn't have bandwidth caps or has much higher ones and never goes off. This should cost less than using one of your workstations, but not necessarily that much less.
Setting both up is pretty easy; just install two access points.
Also, if you're going to put in a nice system be sure to offer it to all your nearby business and residential neighbors to make a few extra bucks.
I am not a lawyer, but I don't think you have an obligation to keep those records. You have an obligation to turn them over if you have them, and an obligation not to selectively destroy them AFTER you know something bad happened. But I don't believe you are required to track all the details.
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It's almost free - he charges 1/2 what T-Mobile charges - so if he gets 3 people using it over a day he makes his money back.
If more people would sign up, his service would converge on free.
Starbucks sucks becaue they dont have free wifi. While in the city i intentianally goto Panrea bread of Espresso Royale for coffee becasue they have wifi.
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I too, once suffered from the thought that an internet/wifi coffee shop would be a good idea...
Repeat after me:
Profitability in the retail food service industry is not about encouraging long-transactions by customers who take up space for extended periods of time...
It is about serving a larger number of customers in a smaller period of time. It is about table-turnover. What is going to pay your mortgage: someone who buys a slightly more expensive cup of coffee for the free wifi and stays for an hour, or having 3 sets of people use that table in the same period?
No, of course not. Wifi should be thought of as a condiment - free to use with purchase. Setting a purchase policy is up to the owner of course, but it be good to go.
Wait- internet cafe... as in a place that makes money by selling internet access? And you're having trouble convincing the owner to give it away for free instead?
Hmmm.
Just limit to say 4 or 5 users logged in, if you're a really small shop limit it to 2-3 users. If someone has been sitting in your store too long, have the employees ask them if you're going to make a purchase ;) Most restraunts have a policy against loitering, it's just rarely enforced, because normally you don't need to unless they're causing a disturbance, or table space is really limited.
Way better than access codes, it's free, but only so many people can use it, plus when you limit it to 1-2 people you can get a really slow dsl line like 256k/256k and save a lot of money.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
WiFi is becoming universally available anyway because the vast majority of folks don't know how to secure their routers. Naturally I thought this was a very bad thing at first and when I configured networks for my non-techie friends I made sure to turn all the encryption on.
But lately I've been looking at WiFi as more of a commons. There are water fountains everywhere, why shouldn't there be WiFi? It's only going to get cheaper and more plentiful, and it's hard to imagine businesses putting a lot of money into authentication, metering, etc., when there are a half dozen open connections in the area to choose from.
But if we all offer it when we have it, it'll be there for everyone.
Zyxel sells an access point designed for just this purpose: ZyAir B-4000. Much easier than implementing it yourself, unless there is already on Open Source solution based on NoCat or something similar.
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http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1650238,00.a
http://www.zyxel.com/product/model.php?indexcate=
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I'd tell your businessman friend that I really like free wifi, so I would come to his shop. I probably wouldn't buy his coffee or food, but I'd bring lots of friends and we'd play first-person-shooter games and yell taunts across the cafe at each other. Really, I think the goverment should implement free, universal wifi because... Well, because I want it. Then I could check my email when my car is stopped at a traffic light.
First off, don't make it free for everyone - make it free for "high-value" customers. For example, if you are a coffee shop, anyone spending more than $20 in a 2-month period gets free Internet for the next 30 days or something. Otherwise, charge a nominal fee of $1/half-day or something. This will keep the freeloaders off and help secure criminal convictions for war-drivers who want to trade k1dd13 p0rn.
Second, require ID or at least keep a photograph handy in the FBI comes calling. The only reason NOT to do this is if you are specifically making yourself available as a "come one, come all, do anything you want just hide your screen if you are viewing porn" place of business, like some public libraries are. If you ARE doing that, then unless you meet the legal definition of a common carrier, for goodness sake do NOT earn money from it in any way or you could be in hot water as an accessory as soon as some idiot downloads k1dd13 p0rn.
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Actually, you make very sound arguments that I hadn't even completely considered before. But I will say this:
1. If you *are* going to offer wi-fi net access, I'm with the people who think it should be a free "bonus" of patronizing the shop. Considering the offering of reasonably high speed data networks by cellular services - the days are really numbered where anyone would even see any point to paying $6.00/hour or more to use the net. With my Treo 650 phone, not only can I pick up and send email and do basic web browsing right on the phone - but if I need more than that, I can establish a dial-up networking connection via bluetooth and use my cellphone as a wireless modem for my laptop. If I already pay for an "unlimited data" package on my cellphone, I'm not going to pay again for wi-fi at some coffee house!
2. Maybe it depends on the area, but my previous coffee house experiences tell me that they're usually kind of "dead" around lunchtime. If free wi-fi draws in a bunch of busy businesspeople during their lunch break, so what if they're not your "ideal patrons"? They're coming in at a time when you may as well take any customer you can get. Just offer some good *food* so it's worth their time to eat lunch there, like Panera Bread does - and you'll get some money out of their pockets even if they're not really into coffee.
3. As a corrolary to my last item; your coffee house should cater to the idea that different times of day and night, you can attract different crowds. Your late evening crowd probably *is* a bunch of students who want to socialize and "hang out", so why not run things a little more "business-like" during the day, and change gears to a more "fun, social" atmosphere after dark? If wi-fi is hurting this, set it up so it's automatically disabled after a certain time of night until the next morning.
If, OTOH, he's an access provider, then it doesn't make sense to give away his primary business. But if that is his business, he's probably in trouble: what with all the other free ways to access the net, access providers are going the way of the dodo.
My thought is that computer use should cost, but wireless shouldn't. But that's just me.
Free, meaning you don't pay for something directly, but are charged through a related purchase.
In this case, the charge comes from more expensive coffee. "Free" municipal Wi-Fi (paid for by taxes) is another example.
Not to be confused with "Free as in Herpes".
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
In Austin, TX, you'd be hard pressed to find a coffee shop that could stay in business without free Wi-Fi. Many places just offer open access points, but there is also a group called Austin Wireless City http://www.austinwirelesscity.org/ where participating locations have users log in for free Wi-Fi. In turn, the businesses are able to advertise on the log-in screen.
Having a log-in might allow the cafe's owner to advertise specials or new drinks and discourage the users from accessing illegal / questionable materials (since they might at least think that they could be identified). With users being registered, I think this would still allow the owner to offer free internet but still encourage users to be reasonable about content and time.
They found that people would order a coffee and then work all day long, decreasing their per customer revenue dramatically.
I am not an expert in this area, but I can't see how the cost and hassle of setting up a billing system could possibly pay itself back. WiFi is just not intrinsically designed for "pay for play". Unless you have a captive audience (such as an airport), I don't see how billing for WiFi could make economic sense for someone that doesn't make a core business out of it.
Even for someone who does make a core business out of it (such as Starbucks' deal with t-mobil) probably has pretty marginal economics.
That leaves Wifi as a loss leader to drive traffic. Since the infrastructure cost is so low, this probably wouldn't cost much. On the other hand, if your cafe is pretty full most of the time, it won't add much benefit, either. Nor will it build a structural competitive advantage (since there is no barrier to entry for competing cafes and no switching costs for your customers). So it won't generally build customer loyalty over the long run.
My instinct is that WiFi will become a simple cost of doing business, like disposable cups and free cream. My advice: don't be the first one on the block to get it. This keeps your costs down. When your competitor gets WiFi, then you get it too. The next day.
If serious about this, your friend should ensure the shop has sufficient conveniently located plugs for all those laptop users.
My favourite coffee shop with free Wifi (downtown Ottawa) has too few plugs, and one really great convenient table. The other tables are too far from the plugs, and the best plugs are near the bars along the windows, which aren't really wide enough for laptops.
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If a coffee shop has a problem with people who stay too long they need to look at what they do at peep shows. They should have a Faraday cage around each seat with a little flap that stays open while you feed coins into the meter. As soon as your time runs out you get shut off.
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Here in Brazil we already have a case where a Cyber Cafe has to pay fines (about US$ 25.000) for letting to teenagers (16 and 17 years each) access porn from their computers.
Sorry, links in portuguese
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I think that the best solution is probably to offer free wifi, but no power outlets, or better yet, free wifi, but limit the bandwidth so that the power users can play, but are better off at home.
The situations that you *don't* want are nonpaying 'customers' complaining about the service, or users planting themselves in one spot for 8 hours.
I think that if you implement the suggestions above, you'd support people who want some basic access and still get some turnover.
In my case, when I was working on a proposal for a few weeks(without an office), we spent quite a bit of time working in local cafe that offered free wifi. During a multiple hour session, we easily spent $20 per person on lunch, soda, coffee, and snacks. If the wifi did not exist, we would be somewhere else.
Besides people working on grant proposals or people starting a biz without office space, free wifi attracts business clientèle. Locations with wifi are preferred for longer lunch meetings. Most of these meetings would previously be spent in a conference room, but now people can get out of the office and remain connected.
Sure, your always going to have some punky looking kid who likes to sit there for a few more hours than he should, but its worth it in the long run.
I know of one local shop that removed all of the power outlets so that the laptop guys didn't linger all day. Yeah, some guys bring in several batteries, but it still made for a decent turnover of tables.
Here in Lansing, a new cybercafe called Gone Wired opened up a few months ago. It's probably too early to judge whether they are a success or not, but they offer free wifi and judging from the amount of foot-traffic I see, they can't be hurting too badly.
In the end, I don't think free wifi has much to do with the overall profitability of a cafe business. All you really need for wifi are decent broadband, a flexible router, and an access point. Much more important are location, atmosphere, and product quality in that order. You only need to be concerned with table-squatters if the cafe is really jumping AND space is at a premium. At that point, they can probably be ticketed for loitering or something if they refuse to either buy a beverage or leave when asked politely. If idiots are hogging bandwidth with p2p, then simply spend a little extra cash and man-hours to configure a firewall that can penalize bandwidth hogs.
The Gone Wired Cafe offers free wifi, but charges some insane amount if you use their computers. I wouldn't even bother with more than 2 or 3 cafe-owned stations depending on the size of the venue, as I've only ever seen one person use one in the dozens of trips that I've made to the place. (Obviously, it would be idiotic to spend top dollar on brand-new computers when almost any old PC will browse the web just fine these days. KDE in Kiosk mode would be excellent for this, btw.)
Most of your customers are going to have enough common decency to buy a drink before settling down to use your wifi. Our local LUG meets at Gone Wired and this is something of an unwritten rule among us. (We have an agreement with the managers that lets us bring our own pizza, of course.) The drinks are a tad expensive, but free wifi makes up for it. We wouldn't be meeting at the cafe and buying drinks if the wireless internet access wasn't free. And we are far from the only computer-oriented group that meets there.
Bottom line: free wifi will definitely help rather than hinder as long as long as the rest of the business is kept in line as well. I'd recommend telling your business man to give the owners of Gone Wired (linked above) a call. From what I can tell, they're pretty friendly and would probably be happy to lend some advice as long as he doesn't plan to set up shop in Lansing.
Having WiFi available at a coffeeshop is a major selling point for travelers that frequent certain areas (or even have the foresight to do a little Googling beforehand).
For example, I used to travel frequently between school in San Luis Obispo to see my girlfriend in Fresno. When her work schedule changed to put her in the office on the only days I could come over, I opted to simply wait her out in a coffee shop and do homework. The coffee shop we frequented for this purpose (biweekly or so) had free WiFi, which made me working from there possible.
The point is: I would not go to that coffeeshop and buy coffee (I purchased several drinks and some food during each 8 hour stint) unless it had free WiFi.
Just a thought,
Sean
Cheers,
Sean
If you do offer WiFi, are you going to offer a VPN so they don't broadcast their stuff everywhere?
www.hotspotvpn.com
www.publicvpn.com
www.witopia.net
For people who are looking into the market of gourmet coffee.. I would imagine the type of people you're trying to attract are the ones who have the money to buy a drink sit and chat with perhaps a client/business colleague for a few and head out.
Those types of clients most likely will be utilizing devices like blackberrys or palm treos that inherently already have built in internet.
Offering free wifi really just attracts one type of person, the squatter. Usually someone who buys one or no cups of coffee and squats there for multiple hours while real paying guests come and go because there's no room around.
As an alternative example is the star bucks at my barnes and noble.
it's ALWAYS packed because people just bring the books there and start reading. I see at most people buying a cup of coffee and finishing entire novels at a time. Is that good for business? most likely not in a volume based business. You're looking for more volume, and offering things that just make people sit there longer is not it.
If on the other hand you added a special promotion where only people who are extremely attractive get free wireless, then you dont mind if they sit there as long as they want because they'll pull in more volume..
regardless free wifi is never worth it for the cafe/coffee shop.
I've lived in Chicago and trolled for wireless locales for my laptop.
I've gone to Goose Island and loved it. They dont ask you to buy anything (though I tip my server always) and have spent a lot other times when I was hungry or thirsty or both. The connection is good and fast.
The information I have to add here is that Goose Island will loan you a PCMCIA wireless card if you need one. Now that is a service I havent seen elsewhere.
Daaltje
Hotspot in a box
AirSpot
Last but not least
There are several locations in this area that have free WiFi provided by a local ISP, and the general feeling is that the free service attracts customers and is good for business. (I've also heard and read blog postings from several customers of those businesses who claim that the wireless service is one of their reasons for choosing those businesses over competitors.)
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Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
Even better, since the business name is on the hotspot AP, you'll draw in people from the surrounding businesses over time.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Im know fuck all about networks but couldnt there be software that runs on a laptop that seeks out hot spots where you are and then when it finds one it launches an advertisement from the Wi Fi owner before it lets you accesss the newtwork. So the network would listen in for a connection request from the hot spotter and let him/her in once the advertisement has been seen.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
No one ever thinks of the children!
The way to keep people with laptops moving is to limit the number of power outlets available. Eventually, laptops will run out of juice, and, if the place is packed, the freeloader will have to move on.
Of course, somebody could bring a power strip (or an extra battery)... but I've yet to see someone go to that extreme.
My wife and I own a little outdoor cafe in Tempe, AZ, and we offer free Wi-Fi. I work as a software developer during the day, and my wife runs our restaurant. We would have paid the approx. $35 per month to Qwest for a 1 Mbps DSL line anyway (to use our computer), and the DSL modem had the wireless router built right in. So why not offer it for free? I checked around to see what if any companies wanted to put in service and maintain it. The hassle factor was way too high, and I know my customers would have been irritated at the prospect of paying. For about $1 a day (I sound like Sally Struthers), I can get people in the door to buy my coffee, sandwiches and/or beer. When they're done surfing the web, they'll stick around for the live music. We don't get too many squatters. When we do, the server (the human who brings you your food, not the one that delivers HTTP content) just reminds the offender that the internet is free for our CUSTOMERS. I thought about a technological solution, but I think that the human touch works a little better. Generally people will buy something if reminded, rather than leave if they just get cut off. I get plenty of positive feedback from my customers about the free internet. On the other hand, I have never had anyone suggest that we start charging. There will be people who abuse anything you give away. We have had customers take handfuls of sugar packets and stuff them in their purses. We have kids take a dozen packets of crackers to feed the ducks (we're on a lake). I can't tell you how many times people have stolen our soap pumps out of the bathrooms. These are all things you have to put up with when you own a business that serves the public. But when you start nickel-and-diming people to death (gee, $1.50 for the coffee, plus 2 Sweet-and-Lows at 10 cents each... your total is $1.84 with tax), people get irritated and don't come back. And that's how people feel when you charge them six bucks an hour to surf the web.
I've heard stories of adding free wireless generating a few thousand dollars per month of extra business, but those are second-hand. I can't point to anything proving that. However, I do have quite a lot of experience with using free wireless. Perhaps that helps.
I work at home, and really enjoy the ability to have a change of scene. I've been spending a lot of time at coffee shops for about 3 years now. Also, I often go out for meetings with my partner and we usually will go to a place that has net so that we can do whatever we need while we're talking.
In our area, we have only 5 restaurants that have wireless, and two of them are pretty foul. Our favorite we will on average go to twice a week. They have good food, but if it weren't for the wireless, I'd probably only go there once or twice a month. The restaurants around it I haven't been to in probably 2 months.
3 years ago I basically spent nothing at coffee shops. I have never really liked coffee. Today I spend around $300/month at coffee shops on mochas (light on the chocolate), teas, and chais. I also tend to meet with one of the other guys in our business frequently at coffee shops, and also clients, which probably generates another $200/month in revenue, and have set up a couple of regular meetings at coffee shops as well, generating another $200/month.
The common complaint is that people come in, hog tables, don't buy anything. I spend a LOT of time at almost all of the local coffee shops that have wireless. I have seen that, but it's pretty rare around here. When people complain about that, I wonder if it's just a regional thing, or if it's really a problem at all. I haven't seen it. Usually when a coffee shop is full, it's either students studying for midterms, or it's a bunch of people being social.
There's also a statement that people on computers just sit there in front of the terminal and grump, not talking to anyone else. I've met around two dozen people, from just being regulars and saying "hey, how's it going?" to helping people fix their networking, to people asking me about stickers on my laptop. I haven't seen evidence that it's isolating.
What are some businesses that have successfully used free WiFi? Panera Bread comes to mind. We don't have one here yet, but the last time we had some time to kill in the large urban center an hour away, that's where we went because of the Free WiFi.
When we travel we will often stay at Holiday Inn Expresses, because they tend to have free WiFi, even though they're more expensive than the places we would normally stay otherwise. Free WiFi is the primary selector we use for places to stay when we travel, if we can't get that we go for free wired net. If we have lots of selection, we will tend to select the place that most proudly displays "Free (whatever) Internet" on their billboards or building. I kid you not. It's important to us, and therefore it's important to us to support it.
Remember about 8 months ago when slashdot reported that state parks in Texas were adding free WiFi? My wife and I used it as an excuse for a vacation in January. We stayed at a Holiday Inn Express in Rockport (roughly mid-way between Corpus Christi and a park with WiFi), that had free WiFi. The park was pretty vacant when we were there, because it was very much the off season, but they got all this business simply because the state park added wifi.
So, does free WiFi help business? I haven't seen any evidence that it hurts it, and have quite a lot of personal evidence that it helps quite a lot. (He says, writing this from a restaurant who's Free WiFi is broken, so he's using lowly CDMA.)
Sean
Schlotsky's representatives are saying 6% of customers surveyed in their wi-fi enabled restaurants considered the free wi-fi access critical to their decision to eat there, and up to 40% said it was a factor in the decision. I've seen statistics that said revenue per customer was up to 16% higher in wi-fi locations because folks stay longer and buy more.
Out here in BFE, there is a small coffee shop that has one computer, open wifi and a 4 port for customers to access the internet. Their prices aren't any higher than any other coffee shop that DOESN'T offer free wifi internet.
Another coffee shop in Portland offers hardwired ports and wifi, the only thing they ask is that customers buy at least ONE beverage/food item.
I visit both shops regularly and I often see the same people taking advantage of the wifi and plugged-in, as well as new faces, too.
Even though the coffee shop here in BFE doesn't ask that customers buy something, I always do.
Seriously, I'd like an Internet Bar where I can bring my laptop and then drink alcoholic beverages. C'mon guys... Hurry up with the idea! I'm tired of having to bring my vodka flask to coffee shop.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I guess it has to be free, because it is pointless to have it paid, and I might say that even WEP is kinda losing its value, because in a recent announcement, our univ (UNM) announced that they wont have any more WEP or restriction to wifi by registering mac adds, and hence its open to all.. though we might have to log-in using our IDs (at some point later, I "guess")
the reason that people sit in there with their laptops is scarcity. if every restaurant and coffee shop had free wireless it'd cease to be an issue. further, loitering=loitering, whether you're doing it with a laptop open or not. people taking up spaces inside businesses is nothing new - what about sheltering from rain or cold? i've seen it many times.
the key, as i see it, is to just kick out those who are just loitering. i can't afford to pay for wireless, i would say many people can't, so i for one am glad to see places with free wireless.
The local coffee shop "Common Grounds" in Davis, CA provides free WiFi and they appear to be very successful. I for one spend a lot of time (and dollars) there.
One thing to keep in mind if you decide to offer "free" internet is you're going to get people who campout on their laptops and take up table space for hours at a time. Some people even stay there all damn day like it's their personal office space. This might lend itself to loss of business from patrons just wanting a quick cappuccino or dessert and having no seats available. I'd make sure to designate certain tables with time limits or as "No Internet." Good luck!
Wait. It's a coffee shop. It has a door. Any business owner can ask someone to leave his establishment, so long as it's not done in violation of some law.
I've been asked to leave a crowded store when it was obvious I wasn't buying - the coffee shop can always do that. I seem to recall one time I had a laptop at a coffee shop - visiting relatives - the store employee (or maybe the manager) asked me if I could either buy some coffee or vacate the table for paying customers.
It's like a bookstore or comic shop - some people will read the whole issue of a magazine or comic from cover to cover if you let them - store owners always can refuse their business/browsing.
Next!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Wireless internet is certainly an incentive for me to patronize a coffee shop. But I also want coffee. If I wanted to freeload, I'd just to go the public library, which also has free wireless.
The longer I'm at these coffee shops, the more I buy.
Victrola Coffee in Seattle has a lot of experience with this. They shut off their wifi on the weekends. It might be worth contacting them to find out their thoughts.
The Flying Star chain of cafes in Albuquerque, NM http://flyingstarcafe.com/ is an example of a success. They offer free wireless in all their restaurants (including the Satellite chain of coffee shops). It's obviously working for them, since they're constantly expanding.
I think they contract with Qwest to do it, but that's from an employee who wasn't real sure.
"A plan's just a list of things that don't happen" -- Mr. Parker, "The Way of the Gun"
If you don't charge, you don't have any responsibility for problems. No support required. If you charge, you've got to have staff able to answer questions about DNS, firewall, blah, blah, blah.
As for the liability issue, it's a red herring. Service Providers aren't liable for the behavior of their users. If the cafe offers a phone for free local calls and the person calls in a bomb threat to the local city hall, the cafe is not responsible. Same with people downloading pirated content. This doesn't hold true if people are DDOSing a host due to a trojan-conquered zombie laptop, though. The coffee shop's upstream provider might chop their service.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
http://www.publicip.net/
Check out Zone CD. It works great for small shops. I set up an old PII box for a local shop. All you need is a computer, CD-Drive, two NICs, and an access point. It's great. Did I mention it's FOSS?
As a business traveler, finding WiFi is key. Being the frugal businessman that I am, I of course prefer free. I've kept tabs on which location provide free WiFi and those are the places I will frequent. This, of course leads to more money to the establishments I frequent.
Case in point: When I moved back to CA I was waiting for my cable (Internet) to be set up. I asked a friend which nearby coffee shop had free WiFi and I found myself there every day checking emails (and deleting spam) and taking care of business. They certainly made a pretty penny off my coffee purchases (I generally make my own coffee and tea at home when I'm not needing a coffee shop for a specific reason).
That was obviously a case FOR. By simply having free WiFi, they collected money from me and countless others. I use the same methodology when booking hotels. HOWEVER, the system can be abused. I didn't have to buy coffee. The place could have been loaded with freeloaders who wanted free WiFi but didn't want to buy anything.
I would start by offering free WiFi. That's it, no required purchase or anything. Watch to see how the traffic grows and what kind of traffic it is. If you're lucky, you won't have to place any restrictions on it. If you're getting loads of freeloaders, implement a "purchase required" policy or have some sort of time limit (one hour? Two hours? Only the shop owner will really know what's best for their particular shop).
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
The places that DO offer free WiFi I DO patronise. And I make it a point to do so, and I spend much more time and money in such places as well.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I only go to coffeeshops that offer free wireless. Period. I've already spent at least $500 for coffes/frappucinos/cake etc. this year and I know that at least most of my friends are the same way. Also, based on my experience the places that offer free wireless are almost always crowded to the max with people surfing the web and getting one coffee after the other plus slices or cakes, cookies, etc. This means dramatically increased revenue for coffeeshops with free wifi. No question. Just look around and see it for yourself.
Yes, there's definitely a case for coffeehouses with free wifi-
I'm currently reading slashdot from Cafe Las Cuiles in Oaxaca, Mexico - this place has become my office, specifically because they have free wireless, and they've gotten a lot of my business because of it.
I've been doing this traveling / bartering photography gig for a while ( see http://www.jjtiziou.net/fieldtrips ) and whenever I get into a new city, the first thing I do is seek out a place with good coffee, a nice atmosphere, and free wifi. And in Philly, I don't have an office, I just work out of local coffeehouses (a while back there was another slashdot story about a seattle software company working exclusively out of a local coffeehouse)
Having been a coffee wench for six years, I completely understand that there is potential for problems with free wifi when customers come in and hog table space, loiter around for hours while only buying a tiny cup of coffee, and stare at their screens instead of participating in the social atmosphere that one would want in a coffeehouse.
This coffeehouse has addressed this potential problem head on, probably the way I would if I ran such a place, by putting signs up- they're totally clear and honest and logical:
"Los Cuiles provides free wifi for it's customers. We ask that you be conscious that food and drink are what pay our bills, and we encourage you to share a table with another laptop user if tables are short" -
So yes- I'm all in favor of the free wifi- and if you're ever headed to Oaxaca, Las Cuilas is one block south of Santo Domingo. If you need a travel office in Philly, try Kaffa Crossing in west philly, Old City Coffee, or the Ground Floor in northern liberties. When in Minneapolis, the SpyHouse is great. In Omaha, there's a small place called the Blue Line, and a bigger spot called Caffeine Dreams that I quite liked. And plenty more elsewhere....
take care,
-jj
If it's an Internet cafe, then the customers will be paying to use the wired terminals. Why should they get wireless for free? Charge them the same as for the wired terminals. Keep things simple, and make everything work the same.
I've heard this question a hundred times and it all boils down to how you -frame- the question. Don't think of this as: "Should I offer free wi-fi." It's not a question of free or not free. It's a question of whether you charge people for the wi-fi through (1) the prices you charge for coffee and food, or (2) itemizing wi-fi access. You don't ask "Should I offer free electric light?" because you realize that's an absurd question. You could install a coin-operated lightswitch at each table in the cafe, so that people have to pay 25 cents for each 10 minutes of light. But that would irritate your customers, it would damage your brand (make you seem stingy) and it would add tremendous transaction costs. You have to purchase and install, repair and maintain the coin machines, you have to collect and count the coins, etc. So you just figure the overall monthly cost of electricity and bundle that into the cost of the food and coffee.
he could provide wireless or even wired access for about half the price you got at regular internet cafes. or you get free access with a purchase where access was limited to 1-2hrs where the customer could extend that if the coffee agents were nice :)
but as it turns out it is better to provide free yet limited access for the entire street provided by the city. with store owners giving out temporary yet faster and longer connections with purchase. the hard part is getting the city to provide free access to an entire street.
The scheme to generate the identifier doesn't have to be all that clever. There's a few bits of entropy in the purchase price, after all.
There is a restaurant (little diner) that I go to for lunch 2 to 4 times a week. If they didn't have WiFi I might go a couple of times a month. Simple as that.
The thing that stops me from buying coffee and going to coffee shops is the lack of free internet...
- Ryan
Recently I was trying to convince a woman who is about to open a brothel, to provide blowjobs at no charge. I argued about increased business and royalty and proposed that the infrastructure cost these days is reasonable and the recurring cost, along with the amortized payoff of the initial investment, can be recovered by adding a few cents to each handjob, etc. In spite of the numerous discussions on the merits of free bjs v. paid at coffee shops, restaurants, etc, I was interested in hearing what do you think about the issue and if there are solid examples of successful businesses that offered free blowjobs." If you were going to argue for or against this issue, what arguments would you use?
How to deal with the "one-coffee, 6-hours guy" - the guy who spends $1.50 and then takes up a table all day? Yes there are technical ways to attack this problem. Time-limited access codes printed on receipts. Often-changing WEP keys or captive-portal passwords. But at the heart of it this is NOT a technical problem, it's a social problem. A small percentage of any group are jerks, regardless of whether they're carrying laptops. Cafe owners also have some few people come in who read a book or draw or write for hours, taking up a table w/ one coffee. But that's called rudeness. We've evolved -social- means for dealing with rudeness. The barrista can ask "can I get you something else" a couple times and then finally say "sorry, if you're not buying anything you'll have to clear that table for our customers." Better yet, the regulars in the cafe can give the guy dirty looks or tell him to buy something. Social means are effective and they were business-as-usual in successful cafes long before laptops. People, please try the simple, effective -social- methods before telling cafe owners to implement complicated -technical- methods for dealing with a social problem, methods that will annoy the majority of laptop-using cafe patrons who aren't jerks, and that will add new maintenance and transaction costs and hassles for the cafe staff and owners (who are usually overworked as it is and often not technically inclined).
I'm sitting here right now doing my work, and procrastinating on /. using their free wi-fi. Honestly, the place is packed with laptop users. And there always seems to be a line for the counter as well. Granted the usual clientel, me, does stay for a while, but I do try to get an extra cup of coffee or a brownie just out of respect for their business.
I much rather code here with other people around than work at home.
Put several ethernet plugs along a long table so that people can plug their laptops in (for a fee). Set up a router that offers port 80 access, maybe POP3, maybe FTP (but leaves no other ports open).
The router is a Linux box. When a user starts his session, you call a script "startUser" which does an ifup on the ethernet card he's connected to, then crontabs bringing the ethernet card back down after a half hour, or hour, or whatever. If the user pays for more time, you run startUser again, and it extends the crontab time limit.
It's simple, it isn't possible to freeload, and it keeps people away from the seats reserved for COFFEE customers.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
Advertising is the American way.
Many local restaurants and such have free wifi - which includes a few posters around the building for the ISP. I'll bet you can find a similar arrangement with someone there.
Quick question: Do these places that provide wi-fi also provide the ability to plug into power?
I have an edge card for my laptop with an OK connection from just about anywhere, not hi speed or anything -- but faster than a typical dial up...But usually it endes up being mostly a novelty if I can't plug in to power, since battery life divided by the time it takes me to boot up and getted logged in * 100 usually equals NOT WORTH IT.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
When WiMax or the successor to 3G becomes widespread, mobile users will subscribe to these services and get broadband wireless without needing a hotspot.
Vote for Pedro
"This place has WiFi, if I ever had a laptop and a need to check my email while drinking my coffee, maybe I'd bring it here."
I know when I had a good laptop, and when I get a new one, I frequently spent and will spend tyme in cafes with it. I actually got more work done there than anywhere else. Of course when I went with my laptop they didn't have WiFi and I stop by before and/or after classes.
FalconShould there be a Law?
WiFi is essential for making sure you don't accidentally meet any women.
paintball
If a coffee shop, hotel, marina offers WiFi or via a 3rd party offers WiFi for a fee, when it doesn't work, they will face angry customers expecting them to fix it. The higher the fee, the more swearing.
If the WiFi is free, the screaming, swearing will at the very least, be minimal.
My $0.02
Coffee People (Beaverton,OR) has free WiFi. When you first connect (before you mark it as a preferred network), you will notice that the for-charge Starbucks WiFi across the street is available too. IE: You can access either one from either coffee shop.
Realistically, that means that which wifi you want to use will not affect which coffee shop you use (baring the shops turning into faraday cages)...
However, if Coffee People were charging money for usage, I wouldn't pay. I would just wait till I got home or try to connect to one of the other 3-4 networks it detected.
http://www.google.com/profiles/malachid
Why not a tip jar for the wifi?
As for me, my favorite cafe charges for wifi. I only go there if I'm planing on leaving my laptop at home, I go to two closer places if I think I might want to use the laptop, because they offer free access.
If my fav place offered free access, I'd always go there.
Plato seems wrong to me today
Allow me to waste a bit of bandwidth here to plug Nomad Cafe in Oakland, CA.
Not only do they offer free WiFi to the masses, but the owner installed a LAN throughout the cafe, so your never more than a few feet away from an ehternet jack.
They are also active in the community and sling some dope, fair-trade, organic joe.
That's what I call a business model.
My other
It's like having a Starbucks that serves unlimited free coffee. No brainer. Dude wants to make money, he should not sell one product and give another one away for free.
Karma: Bad is the liberal way of saying this guy won't drink the kool aid here on slash dot. I wear my Karma with pride
Where do you think the people from the record companies and particually their kids go to download music? Based on what a few friends in the industry have told me coffee shops are sort of a safehouse and this is a very common practice for the younger people in the biz. They just can't risk it at home or the officeor they will lose their job not just the $3000 settlement. Steamboat Springs
http://www.techdirt.com/news/wireless/article/5716
MjM
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
Making $3.50 per table every 2 hours will not keep them in business. It's all about getting drinks out the door.
obviously, you dont' understand the reason why people go to 'coffee shops'
If all you want is a quick cup of really good overpriced joe, just go to Starbucks or make your own at home for pennies. Locally owned coffee shops usually go for the tradition coffee shop crowd: freegans, beatnicks, hippies, students, artists, punks, emo kids...in general the 'hip' people. The kind of people who would be ashamed if their friends saw them going into evil starbucks.
Having free WiFi attracts these types b/c by definiton, living outside the mainstream usually means being poor in relation to the hyper consumer mainstream.
Now, by going for the 'hip' kids, it attracts all those who are curious, intrigued, bemused, etc. in the company of said 'hip' kids.
If you're looking for big black lines of profit from a traditional coffee shop, just move on, b/c that's not what it's about...it's about establishing a place that artists and whatnot can be artists, nurse one coffee for hours, and get free internet, adn THEN profiting off of all the WANNABE 'hip' people. It won't ever go public, but it will last, and be loved by it's patrons
So, to have a good, true 'coffee shop' you have to be willing to sacrifice some profit, but not a fatal sacrifice. And in return you get hours of amusement from your patrons, and they love you for it.
Maybe there's a way to just charge the wannabe's like you for wifi, while letting us punk beatnicks get our wifi for free.
Thank you Dave Raggett
It's been awhile so I can't quote the source, but I recall reading about one business that ran into problems as a result of this. It was a small restaurant/cafe with an outdoor cafe seating area. Not getting a lot of business, they decided to offer free wifi. This had an unexpected effect - customers would come over and sit down with their laptops and get to work. Often times they would not even order a coffee, or would bring their own food and beverege. Many of them would order a coffee (free refills) and that was it, they'd sit there for hours sipping on coffee and browsing the internet,. So now these squatters are taking up his valuable seating area and bringing no benefit to his cafe. Any restaurant owner will tell you that carry-out customers are much more valuable than eat-in because they don't take up your valuable resource of available seating space. Wifi squatters can take up seating that paying customers would have taken if the cafe were not so "busy" that they skip past it to the one down the block.
I talked with some friends about this problem, and the solution we came up with was a technology solution. Each customer receives a recipt when they purchase something. On that ticket is a 6 digit number that is a temporary code for the access point, good for an hour, or perhaps good for the entire day. That's required to login to the access point. Maybe just make it the ssid and turn off broadcast. (yes I know, you can sniff, we're talking average ppl) This makes wifi "free to paying customers". Really a business should not be offering perks to non paying customers.
Lots of truck stops around here have a pay wifi setup. You see their AP and login but it redirects you to their "stop into the counter to sign up!" screen. You go in, pay $5 and get a temp login that's good for an hour. That's the other way to go, but in that case I think they're using wifi not to attract business, but as a source of revenue. Depending on your market, that can also work. Truckers are a nice captive audience and will pay a premium for internet access from their rigs.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I refuse to get coffee in places that charge for wifi. Free wifi is like free cable tv at a bar. Plain and simple: if I have to pay extra for the open internet at a coffee shop, I will leave and never EVER return. Cheap bastards.
Also, if you're concerned about authentication then its really easy require a free signup where a user will give there name and contact information in echange for having their laptops MAC address added to the allow list in the router. Easy. You can also turn WEP on give them the key for free. This is not so tough.
i helped a friend set up wireless in her coffee shop. we discussed the pros/cons of free vs charged wifi, and after some discussion, her decision was to charge a low monthly fee, equal to a couple of hours at starbucks(which incidentally just opened down the street from her).
the whole point of providing bandwidth is to give an additional service to your patrons. free bandwidth will attract new and repeat business, but it doesn't always turn into an increase cash register activity. the whole point is to get folks to eat and drink at your establishment. free wifi might end up in a loss of sales, and a bunch of users who'll milk a latte for a couple of hours while surfing at your establishment, taking up chair and table real estate that a paying customer could have used.
three can keep a secret, if two are dead - benjamin franklin
I'd charge for my wifi, but then my wife would plug into the router and I'd have a cable running across the floor. That would just be annoying.
Where I live we have a Barnes and Noble, Starbucks, and Panera Bread all in the same little shopping center. I personally visit Panera because of the free wifi quite often, and though I do like the coffee variety at Starbucks and Barnes and Noble, the free wifi is the deciding factor for me. I personally know what it costs to offer wifi access, and to charge $$$ an hour to use is a rip. Panera here is always packed in the evenings and even mornings with students and folks with some time to burn, and I never see moochers. Everyone with a laptop always has a plate of food and coffee in hand.
Internet cafes should go British-style, have coin-operated electricity plugs for those hard-core wi-fiers. An extra income stream for cafe owners, and a good alternative for those wi-fiers who are shaking from too manys coffees, and relatively headache-free compared to paying for wi-fi. (Of course, auto-disconnects or time-outs after half-an-hour on the wi-fi connection would be good too, makes playing WOW mid-battle a wee bit more difficult!)
sig? what sig? i didn't see any sig...
I can't stop myself though.
It's "losing" not "loosing".
-josh
When is the last time you put a coin into a water fountain to get water? Like me, I'll bet your answer is 'never'. It costs money to install the plumbing and the fountain. It costs money to maintian the building's plumbing. You could charge for water, but you don't. You have now seen the future of WiFi.
If someone uses illegal activity using WiFi while in your cafe, you can put yourself into serious trouble.
2 words: Human Beings.
We are dishonorable, deceitful, selfish, twisted, callous..... All the things that help a wild animal survive. And more.
You can have your comfortable little internal philosophical arguments about the 999 people. Yeah they're generally tolerable, and sometimes even lovely. The definition of "lovely" is an exercise left up to the reader.
The other 2 of the 1001 will still throw the metaphorical brick and molotov.
Well, to keep people eating/drinking instead of taking up valuable space at the cafe, i'd print some individual password on the receipt for their order, which would validate their use of the network for some time. Eventually, people who would take the products I want to push or simple spend more money than average would get more free time.
How about instead of putting a password on everyone's receipt, just have a screen, only visible from the cash registers, with a password (a real word, easy to remember from just a glance). This password would rotate every hour or so. The newest and second-to-newest passwords would work (so as not to screw customers arriving just before a change). This lowers the complexity, but is a deterrent to freeloaders. It may not lower the complexity enough though, or be enough of a detterent to make a difference ("hey neighbor, what's the password?").
Anyway, I think some social shaming would be more effective and less annoying than the technical password on the receipt scheme. Anyone have some better ideas?
From the stats I've seen, very few coffee shops actually make profits from wireless access since very few customers actually think it's worth paying 6-10$ per hour simply for internet access. Most don't even have one paying customer per day.
If your goal is to have customers actually working in your coffee shop and buying food/drinks once in a while, offering free access is probably a good way to keep them as they won't have to leave to send an email (which they would probably do if sending that same email would cost 10$ while they could do it for free at home).
Internet access is cheap and wireless routers too. There is simply no maintenance to be made if you just leave it wide open.
There is a user group maintaining wireless access points and working on various free-wireless related stuff in Montreal. You might want to check their website to get informations and arguents: Ile sans fil
Qui ne va pas à la chasse n'a pas de gibier
PHP Queb
No coffee shop makes much money on the people sitting in the shop. Coffee shops make money primarily from their take out customers. Even assuming that people sitting at the tables buy a new cup of coffee every hour, how many takeout customers can the shop serve in that time?
Tables, chairs, sofas, books, papers, music, and yes, Wi-Fi, serve to create an atmosphere that enhance the overall perception of value. It's why they can charge $3.00 for a fucking cup of drip coffee.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Actually, where I am now (Lausanne, Ch) there is a nearby cafeteria which does exactly this. You can log on for x amount of time per 24 hour period. It's free, and plenty power outlets should you need one.
-k
Your mind moves quicker than a nun's first curry. - A. Rimmer
Just have a waitperson lingering around offering beverages/food/whatever to people. About the 4th time around the freeloader is going to feel uncomfortable and leave.
The pretentious losers at my local "hip" coffee shop have never recorded an album, painted a painting, written a book, or sculpted a sculpture.
THAT YOU KNOW OF!!!!!!!!
Your point is completely moot b/c you don't even KNOW any of these people personally, so you therefore have absolutely no grounds to claim anything about their work (or whether it exists). The truth is, you would be nervous and self conscious talking to these people, especially the chicks
you're just another one of those no-job, lives-in-mom's-basement, no-talent losers.
I'm not, I am a high school social studies teacher, p/t newspaper writer, p/t grad. student, snowboarding instructor, and i live alone. I loathe these kinds of kids as much as you do...pretending to be poor artists whilst chowing on mom's meatloaf at 6 every night...those people are not poor, not artists, and do not need free wifi...they need to move out of the damned house and get a job.
we have a name for these kids...trustafarians...and they are the ones who make the coffee shops profitable enough, spending their parent's money, so they are kind of a necessary evil
still think you're right??? a good friend of mine wrote her book (which has been picked up by an agent and will be printed next year) entirely at "Penny Lane" coffee shop on Pearl Street in Boulder, Colorado...why "Penny Lane"???
free...internet (and she lives alone too, w/o major parental funding)
Thank you Dave Raggett
So charge $5 an hour to use the power outlet, or free when you spend $4 dollars. For someone who is there for an hour or two, this is not a problem as the usual battery will sufice and a cup of coffee will get them an extra hour.
For the people who want to leach free net access all day, they are planing to pay for the coffee, nor will they be willing to pay for power. It will keep the leaches out of the place.
Regarding the chance of a cafe owner receiving a subpoena, it won't happen, because the cafe owners don't provide the service. Cafe owners pay a fee to an internet service provider. The ISP places a wireless router in the cafe. The cafe then either sells access, or allows free access. So, any subpoena will be served on the ISP.
Offering free wireless access can be either good or bad for a cafe, depending on the business climate. If the cafe enjoys good business, then it is probably better off charging for access. This is because wireless users tend to spend less over the time they sit in the cafe. If business in the cafe is slow, then offering free access is a way to bring in a little extra income, while also creating an appearance of popularity (an old trick in the restaurant business.)
If someone sets up an access point with an SSID like "free wifi" then it's reasonably to assume they are happy for you to leech off them.
If someone sets up an access point and leaves everything set to the default, then you can't assume they're willing to let you use their access. That's like someone not bothering to lock their backyard gate: if you come in and lounge by the pool... you're trespassing even if you never use anything but the sunshine.
I don't know what the law specifically says about this kind of thing, but it's only common courtesy to ask... or to refrain if you can't find out who's responsible for the AP. If you're not prepared to extend that basic consideration to people, then you're a pretty low kind of worm in my book.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I've generally accepted the reality that most people don't know when to use lose and when to use loose. So I seldom bother to comment. But there it is typed out in all capital letters: ... might be LOOSING you money ...
I wish I understood why this confusion is so nearly universal. Lose and loose are two different words and they are not interchangeable.
I think almost all coffehouses in Iceland have free wifi internet accses provided by Vodafone, dont know if it is the same anywhere else, but they call it hotspots, if you go to iceland, these are the coffeshops where free wifi is available..
http://www.ogvodafone.is/index.aspx?GroupId=2920
if i were going to offer free wi-fi at a coffee shop that i owned, i'd want to restructure the whole thing to at least get some value out of those multi-hour users.
Make it free - but only during the 'down' times of the day. When business is peaking (say 11:30am to 2:00pm) shut it down so that the skulkers have to go soemwhere else and it does not intefere with paying customers.
Alternatively make it free - but only if customers are 'members'. Setup a coffe club card of some type, and when you buy a coffee you get a time-limited access right that expires soon.
Coffee shops always have people in them for long periods of times. That's what they are designed for. Why would they put comfortable chairs and couches in them? This isn't the fast food or fast coffee starbucks. Also, most coffee places don't make the majority of their money on people who come in to chill and drink coffee. Most money comes in from people that need their morning coffee. They are on their way in the morning to work.
Yes the WiFi can be abused. However, if you can facilitate an increase in people WiFi in coffee shops is great. The average person will buy a drink or two while they are there. There will always be someone to try to work the system. Just remember, businesses have the right to refuse service to anyone at any time. You just make sure that your baristas look for those types and confront them. They either will spend some money on coffee or leave. If asked a few times those customers typically will not come back.
I hate the food at Atlanta Bread, but I eat there regularly anyway because of the free WiFi
I try to go to Panera Bread (free WiFi) if I can. Much better + they have Jones Soda - Green apple Soda yummmmmmm
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
This post higher up here in this very same thread notes a system for doing this. If parent gets Score 5, Interesting, then the guy I'm linking to should get some mod notice too!
Go ahead and mod me redundant (I deserve it, I'm linking to a post within this very discussion!), but first mod the other guy up!
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
I think that the idea of charging for wi-fi access is rather unfortunate, not because of the cost to consumer but because of the cost to do business in this way, infrastructure and maintainance are not the average barista's forte... and, sexist though it might be, I'd much rather have a cute girl serving me my coffee than a ragtag collection of guys in "got root?" t-shirts.
Every coffee shop I have visited has a paid service that nobody uses, since there is at least one other free access point available from nearby company boardrooms.
So, if you have a paid for service that nobody uses, you can just as well make it free.
Oh well, what the hell...
enough said.
I'm curious what most of these patrons who stay on their laptops for 3-5 hours at a time are doing with the wifi? Checking email? surfing internet? doing their taxes?
Around here, bar owners are liable if the premises are used to sell (illegal) drugs.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
first you claim those students will casue coffee shops to go out of business,
But then you say they have been around for three years.
Perhap you are wrong? perhaps You used to mooch space and assume everyone does it?
just a thought.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Just have a wi-fi entre ? Post that anyone using a table for Wi-Fi access rather than eating may be charged for the wi fi entre.
A restraunt is a place where you sell food but in general it is about making money. Generally you make that money turning tables and serving meals. But if you can make that money just having people pay to have access that should be fine too. I would put it on the menu as an entre with similar pricing and post some rules. Access complimentary with any entre and if you do not order one and you are using the wireless your are then choosing to purchase the wireless 'entre'. Be real nice and include some simple cheap ass bottomless dish like chips and salsa and a soda and an hour or two limit at which point you will be charged again.
Really the only time that you should have to do this is if there are people waiting for a table and the wireless hogs are holding up the space. Then a waiters comes over and informs that person they have three options. purchase an entre, be charged for the wi-fi entre or vacate the table.
If you do not have paying customers waiting then any revenue stream the wifi users are creating is more than an empty table even if its just the occasional coffee or soda.
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
This posting reminded me of an article I had read way back when (I couldn't remember) about why the NYC Subway System should be free. I found the article and was surprised. It's by Cringley and was, I think, posted on /. It's how I started reading Cringley's column. Here's a snip:
. html
/. ID. So there.
When I visit New York City, I like to ride the subway. It is the fastest way to get around town and stay out of the weather at the same time. The New York City subway system is a remarkable engineering achievement, but there is one aspect of it that I can't understand -- why they charge people money to ride it.
If, like me, you had literally grown up covering city council meetings for bad newspapers, you'd know that just about every transit agency in America claims that ticket sales cover only 10 to 15 percent of the actual cost of providing their service. The rest of the money apparently comes from government and from annoying transit ads. And if you bothered to wade through those transit committee budget reports, you'd make the startling discovery that the cost of creating and selling transit tickets followed by carrying the money here and there also costs 10 to 15 percent of the actual cost of providing the service. So if we eliminated the money infrastructure from our transit systems, they would run faster and simpler than they do today, nobody would have to buy a ticket, and it would all still cost the same.
Why, knowing this, do they still charge to ride the subway? Part of the reason is that Federal transit money is often configured as matching funds, and the Feds like to match against ticket revenue. No revenue (no tickets), no Federal matching funds. Now that's a silly reason. Another reason is a Puritan work ethic that says people just ought to pay to ride the train, darn it. Of course, there are transit unions that don't want their members to lose their jobs. And finally, there is the argument that making the subway free would lead to its overcrowding with rowdy folks generally going nowhere. Having lost MY work ethic way back in the Summer of Love, I find all these arguments bogus. If people are already paying for the service through their taxes, then they are paying for the service, not freeloading. And the freeloaders can think of many places more comfortable than the subway.
So I think all transit should be free. Poor people could get to work and back, kids could get home easier in the dark, there might be less driving and more fuel efficiency. And the very fact that it would be easier to get to work might make more people inclined to go there, leading to greater economic development. This isn't socialism, it's trickle-down transit.
The rest of the article is here:
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20010208
Go read it and while you're at it, read the rest of his stuff. He's smart, he write's well, and he admits when he's wrong. When someone has those three attributes, he or she is deserving of our time.
Of course, whether or not you think any of this has anything to do with free wi-fi is up to you. Me, I access the web on a 33.6 modem and don't have a laptop, alas.
But I've got a four-digit
Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
Mod parent up.
Being a college student, I know of all the local places that provide free WiFi, and I also know of the places that have net access outside of the actual building, and allow you to use it. These are the places that are consistently busy with people during nice weather, and it is a "free" advertisement for their business.
I'm far more likely to visit a business that is less restrictive (ie free unlimited WiFi) because I never know what kind of work (or play) I will be involved in when I get to a cafe.
In Soviet Russia, the government provides free internet for all, for the benefit of the workers. Of course, all the workers of the nation must share one 56k modem, but that's beside the point...
In Springfield, MO. where I live, wifi is free everywhere that has it. There aren't enough techies around here that there would be a point in charging. The few laptop carriers there are will just go elsewhere for internet access if you charge. However, offering free wifi in a city like this works because one might choose to go to a place that has wifi over one that doesn't.
The same applies in larger cities. On a recent trip to Chicago, I was appalled when I sat down in a Starbucks that charged for wifi. After checking my scan, I just connected to the Macintosh store across the way. Charging for wifi might bring in a bit of revenue, but I find it's better used as a draw than as a source of income.
I think it would be nice to have a "work free" place to go to.
I can just see it now...
Now at Local Coffee Place!
No Internet!
Crappy Cell Phone reception!
No Loud Music!
Nice soft seats!
No Work!
God that would be great (just like my basement though.)
Those people will be dead by the end of the day.
After 30 minutes, let your proxy replace all pictures with goatse. That will cause a rapid turnover of table space.
Oh well, what the hell...
I live out in rural bubba land, so there aren't any coffeeshops like as described, but the nearest truckstop has paid-for wifi and also ethernet connections at some of the indoor dining tables. They charge by the hour, day or year. If I lived close enough to get a signal I would have bought a year, 100 clams, decent deal. Anyway, they also have a couple of boxes set up kiosk style that take dollar bills. Every time I've been in there that stuff was getting used, truckers like their email and weather and road reports, etc. When we first moved here before I got my net connection I used to drive over twice a week or so just to get some surfin time in. (much closer than the nearest freebie public library net connection). It seems to be another niche product that makes the truckstops money in that regard, I can't imagine it costing them that much for it to get it set up.
Down town San Diego, is dotted with so many private and business, free access, WiFi spots that it's literally impossible to walk from City College to Seaport Village and not have free internet access the entire way through.
Starbucks, in such circumstances, must compete. Many of the coffee shops in the Gaslamp area, provide free WiFi.
In cases where there isn't free WiFi, such as further away in La Jolla, a Starbucks and T-Mobile combination only serves to entice an urge to simply hi-jack someone elses paid connection. Regardless of how you feel about this sort of activity, it would be the very thing to describe honest crime if crime at all. Besides, who sits in a Starbucks for any significant amount of time, only to have to pay that much for something practically akin to sand on the beach.
The Best Western hotel chain has made it a companywide policy to provide free WiFi (and, in many cases, hardwired Ethernet) Internet access to any guest, at any of their locations, that wishes to use it. Granted, not all locations are online as yet, but they're working on it.
I can't speak for them, of course, but this amenity is certainly a major reason that I've made BW my 'Lodging of Choice' whenever I'm on the road. I rarely stay anywhere else, and when I do, one of the first things I ask is if they have WiFi or broadband Internet available. If they don't, they get bumped to the bottom of my list.
I don't think anyone can say that the cost of providing such an amenity has hurt BW in the least. In fact, I think it has earned them a lot more business than they might otherwise have gotten.
Keep the peace(es).
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
here's an idea: Tier pricing. First 20 minutes is 50 cents, and the price per 20 minutes increases by 50 cents as you go on. That way people can still check their email/news, and you wont get people hogging one table all day. Comments?
Tier Pricing.
Start out with 50 cents/20 minutes and add 50 cents per 20 minutes to the per-20 minutes charge. So it'll be something like this:
0-20 Minutes: 0.50USD
20-40 Minutes: 1.50USD
40-60 Minutes: 3.00USD
etc.
and... tie the per-20-minute tier to a creditcard that's reset everyday so people don't cheat the system and disconnect at 19 minutes, then reconnect again only to pay 50 cents again.
That way people can still check their e-mail/news/etc without hogging bandwidth to chat with their friends/trade music.
Comments?
Not sure this has much impact, but here's our setup. $6 hour .. most employees are liberal enough to break that down to $1/10min. We have a small following of vacationing offices (tourist town) (particularily those who can bill it to expenses), but for the most, they pay their way. It's not as cheap as the cities, but it's a convenience for them, without being a loss for us.
As far as I'm able to discern, it's supply and demand. We have the market for short-term vacationing offices, not full-time leeches.
Well, here's what I think they should do. I like the idea of the freeloader zone where you have half of the cafe roped off for freeloaders, but that half gets crowded and you have the chance of causing a scene. A better idea in my opinion is to create a simple password system whose passwords expire after a certain time period... you get a password on your sales receipt and it's only good for say an hour. It's user specific and only good for one MAC address. Once your time is up, you have to buy something else to get a new password or you're cut off. Simple as that.
I think Borders and some other large bookstore chains in some locations provide free WiFi Even if a third party vender is providing the service, the place of business/location / store, etc., would still be libal. As far as being free or not, really is anything free? Even you said the price of the beverages would have to go up. Seems like this would drive away some potentional customers that might not want to use wireless services. Better in my opinion just to stick to quality services and food at a good price. I think that would generate the most business and profits.
My theory: It's the human who brings the food and beverages to the table that makes such a place successful.
Think about it. Are you going to leave your laptop on the table to go juggle wet and sticky stuff across the room? Might you lose your seat if you take the Powerbook with you? Can you get coffee, sugar, your bag and your laptop back to the table easily? And now what about that sandwich?
You might not think about it consciously, but it's a lot easier just to sit there and continue playing. Wouldn't it be great if someone brought you some pie?
Oh my.
I don't know of any coffee houses or restaurants in New Brunswick surrounding Rutgers that charged for access (maybe Starbucks). Many students I know went to coffee houses to study, and if any of them HAD charged for access, it would have been emptied out of the study crowd. In certain locales, there's just no way to provide something other than free -- people will use if it's free, and perhaps pay for something else like coffee or food, or they'll do without or go elsewhere. In other places (airports, etc.) or places with fairly cheap business models (Verizon Airfone ain't bad... about $6 for the flight -- the little you can do is enougn for me), paid wireless can survive, but not in others.
The other thing that, IMO, hurts paid wireless is that everyplace has a different provider. Starbucks uses one, this place uses another, SFO and EWR use different ones... I'm not paying 5 companies for wireless access, so what are my options?
I resent being called a droid!
Does this idiot begrudge his customers the cost of electric lights? Does he charge people if they want to read a book while they're there using the light he pays for? Does he make them register to use his light?
This is a fixed-price convenience like air conditioning. Restaurants do not have little vending machines for the napkins, straws, and condiment packets because A) it would make them look bad, B) the effort to regulate it would cost far more than the thing itself.
Trying to go with the "pay toilet" model for this will just convince the users that the guy's a money-grubbing bastard intent on nickel and diming them to death.
This one's OBVIOUS.
In Kampala, Uganda, we always go to the pub to drink a local bananagin with tonic, and skype to europe for free in a place called The Blue Mango. Pool, couches, nice weather all year round. And Wifi!
Just never try to use your notebook in the pool.
http://www.bluemango-uganda.com/
I run a pilot lounge/flight school at a busy Los Angeles-area airport. I haven't seen much mention of service-oriented businesses such as mine -- but I personally think it's silly NOT to offer this courtesy.
I understand retail businesses (coffee shops, restaurants, pubs, etc) being reluctant, because they rely on high retail turnover -- but if you have service situations, especially where your customers may be waiting (say, car wash, mechanic, hairstylist, others) -- then why *not* provide this service for your patrons?
I've never had to make a cost analysis to justify a public hotspot -- it just seems like a nice thing to do.
Ya know your numbers are WILDLY off... say $100 a month for business DSL... and $100 for a wireless access point or router. Thats it. If your an electronics nincompoop.. another $200 to get a rent-a-geek to set it all up.
And the revenue model ya have there is a little optimistic. 50 items average an hour is a biiiit high methinks for your average coffee shop.
Maybe you missed it but in my calculation I did use $100 for access. The cost of the wap or router is included in the $2000 systems cost, which I believe is high, a hacker or your "rent-a-geek" should be able to setup a system with WiFi for not much more than $1000, $1500 at most using Linux or BSD. I also included $500 per month for a "rent-a-geek" which should include setup if you'er an "electronics nincompoop". As for the 50 item per hour, that's less than one item a minute. I've frequently seen groups of people from 2 to more than 10 come in and each order at least one item taking but a few minutes. I also used 10 hours per day the cafe is open however the ones I've been to are open 12 hours and where I used to go they were open 14 hours a day except Sundays. Admittedly it's been some years since I went into any cafe outside of Barnes and Noble or Borders but even a small cafe could possibly afford to provide free WiFi or provide X amount of tyme for each purchase.
Of course I could get better figures by talking to my sister, a CPA who along with friends started their own accounting firm, and my brother-in-law a CFP, Certified Financial Planner. Though not much of one, in my family I'm the geek while they are the business people.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I'm responding from a cafe I stopped at that advretised free wireless. I'm just passing through and I was already going to get something to eat, but came back here because of it...
-John Fenley
My "confusion" isn't exactly about which word to use. I compose /. posts at about 50 wpm. When composing and typing like that my fingers sometimes insert homonyms and near homonyms, even to words I clearly know the difference between.
:) Sorry.
It is somewhat like my fingers have a substantial word-vocabulary but are hard of hearing.
I don't usually bother rereading my posts, because I don't care enough
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
...I clearly know the difference...
I believe you do know the difference. As far as I could tell there was nothing else that was misspelled or grammatically incorrect. I apologize if my observation was too harsh. However, now that this common error has been brought to your attention you will also be doomed to seeing it everywhere. It is almost ironic that one of the words we lose by this process is the word lose.
well, thanks for your kind response...i think my friend might be interested...she's still taking offers from publishers, but from what I know, she pretty much has the offer she wants and is now jsut seeing what else comes up...
I will talk to her, and if she's interested, she can talk to you directly...email me at globalepperly@yahoo.com if you're still interested
where is your bookstore btw?
_j
Thank you Dave Raggett
Paris on the Platte, Denver, Colorado, at one time offered free wi-fi service. I know, because I helped him set it up when he upgraded bandwidth. It was several years ago that I was there, but I doubt he's changed the policy.
And, I think he was making money at it (off of the food and coffee - I don't know about the coffee, but the food was excellent).
A number of places also offer free wi-fi near where I live now. For example, the Holiday Inn Airport in Visalia, CA offers free wi-fi. There's a restaurant in Fresno, near Fresno State, that offers wi-fi free if you buy a meal there (Boca Cabana, I think it's called).
I don't know of any others, but I'm sure there are some.