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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-$10/hr for WiFi is so ridiculous and such a turn off for them."
The owner initially set-up a "pay as you go" internet connection, where you could either use his computers, or he'd give you a temporary username/ password to access his wireless router. Initially, this worked well for him, as he was the first Coffeeshop in the area to offer internet access. As time went on and other Coffeeshop's started to offer "free" internet (to draw in people), I noticed the volume of people diminished. At that point he made the decision to offer "free" internet for those with wireless laptops, yet continued to charge if you opted to use his computers. I personally feel with all the free WiFi Access Points you're going to have a hard time finding someone who will pay.
One thing to keep in mind if you decide to offer "free" internet is you're going to get people who campout on their laptops and take up table space for hours at a time. Some people even stay there all damn day like it's their personal office space. This might lend itself to loss of business from patrons just wanting a quick cappuccino or dessert and having no seats available. I'd make sure to designate certain tables with time limits or as "No Internet." Good luck!
"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
What? Marriot doesn't even get away with prices like that. There's a coffee shop down the street that's going to profit from his pricing scheme...
If he's concerned with freeloaders, have the cash register print out a code on the receipt that you can enter into a nocat captive portal to authenticate against a RADIUS server. Give them an hour for each purchase, for instance. Tie the code to single MAC address, etc.
But consider the cost of integrating your cash register, running the server, dealing with the tech support, etc. vs. the cost of sticking a WRT54G on a wire and letting a few freeloaders on the 'net.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
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.
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Much higher cost for the business to have terminals (coffee getting spilled into them seems like an obvious problem), less conveience for the customers (how do you arrange the machines in such a way to have a healthy social atmosphere?)
businesspeople will also not be able to log into their corporate VPNs without their laptops or do most business related tasks.
i'll take free wifi any day over terminals
Lord High Crapflooder The Right Honourable Vlad Craig Esther McDavenpherson III
Destroyer of Mercatur.Net
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.
I have read somewhere that coffee shops were realizing higher revenue by NOT have internet.
The model says if you turn over your seats quicker, you make more money.
Internet nets you customers that are there longer, doing work, checking email... and nursing ONE coffee.
Just what I read... no links to back it up
or student/cheap types too cheap to pay for highspeed access themselves (and therefore, unlikely to spend $30 a month on coffee)
in my student experience, it was the other way around. i could afford to either have a high speed connection or buy coffee and hang out the coffee shop regularly. with the coffee shops offering free wifi, it was no longer either/or, so i opted to ditch the high-speed at home and just go to the coffee shop.
The center has 30PCs all designed for gaming, and you need a username and password to get on them. I have no clue if they plan to bring back the wifi access.
There is a coffee shop here in Portland that has free wifi and it's filled with people with laptops. That is all that is there, and there is never a free table. I stopped going there for my afternoon coffee.
I think there is a downside to it being free. I'd like to see a simple system where I get 30 minutes free with a drink. Not sure how that would work, but it would keep the free loaders out.
I go to a cafe with similar problems.
Unfortunately, its not with their customers -- its the folks that live in the apartment complex next door that have all taken to using their free service. Considering the cafe is an upscale place and the apartment complex is a low rent crack den that the neighborhood keeps trying to get rid of, its much more of a problem for their customers than anything else.
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.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
The great thing about Goose Island is that a really good antenna can get you a connection in Sam's Wine & Spirits right behind them. When I come across an new small batch Rye or single barrel Bourbon, I can do some quick googling and find out that whether it is just another re-branded big distillery batch, like Rowan's Creek (yeah, sure, a "new" micro-distillery suddenly has 12-year-old on the shelves...), or something actually worth paying for.
Easy enough to fix, just don't provide any power outlets. Most laptop batteries will be dead in 2 hours, and they'll have to go home.
ive seem some places use 'coffee cards' where they give you a code you enter in to their browser-authentication which gives you x amount of time.
They found that people would order a coffee and then work all day long, decreasing their per customer revenue dramatically.
Other cafes are cutting access only at high-traffic times. When you can fill your seats without it - say, Saturdays, why not? But when you can fill otherwise empty seats with it, why not? People partly come to see other people - the hard core coffee drinkers have espresso machines at home after all. So if wifi gets people there to be watched, even if there's no direct profit from them there's profit from maintaining a space where the people watchers - and those who just like the background of humanity for their own reveries - can be fulfilled. And they are your profit center.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
There's alot of hyperbole around this issue and some substantive facts:
-Very good points on the need to look at the hard business "benefits" Very on target.
-No Cafe owner has ever been sued by the RIAA. The RIAA uses lawsuits for marketing; they want to cut off end users, ie reformed 12 year olds in pepsi ads, not cafe owners. There's not alot of "marketing payoff" in expending legal resources on cafe owner ip lawsuits.
-Costs are the $40 a month for a dsl line from the phone co. Modem/Routers rarely wear out under heavy use.
-From my vantage point here in San Francisco working @ a free wireless cafe, prior points aside,I'd say wifi is a mixed bag for cafe owners.
In the spirit of this thread, my favorite cafe discontinued free wifi a few months back because customers "stayed too long." Often these customers stayed w/o continuously buying drinks and food.
Sooo, if you run a cafe that, w/o free wifi, already has hordes of loyal impassioned customers and quick turnover, your business already does what a successful cafe should do (coffee sales being a great driver of profits--$1.50 on 4 cents of supplies). --Don't take the chance that freeloaders like me (I tip very generously) will crowd up those seats for hours.
The ideal application for free wifi is to turn it on only during otherwise slow hours and post those hours prominently. This way you can use it as necc to hopefully drive business.
-Paid wifi: kind of dumb business model. Great if you need it and mainly work at the same place, but #'s of users are usually pretty few. Won't drive revenues for an otherwise flailing cafe.
Hope this helps!
I think there is a downside to it being free. I'd like to see a simple system where I get 30 minutes free with a drink. Not sure how that would work, but it would keep the free loaders out.
I agree with the downside, especially in some locations. My local coffee/tea shop gives you 30 minutes of time with each drink you order. It's only $2 an hour after that. And they even have about a half dozen repurposed laptops with Ubuntu loaded on them available.
There are a few people that work from there for an hour or two (or more) during the day. They just had a going-away party for a regular who was leaving the country.
freezepeach.org
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
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
I seem to remember there being some software that would cause the POS and router to interact so that it would allow you to connect when you purchased something. Basically, you buy something and your free password to the system is on the receipt. After X amount of time, it will disconnect you, causing you to buy something else. Using this, you could basically keep your product rates the same and watch your average person either clear out when their time is up, freeing up space - or cause them to run over and buy something else real quick. The military (ok, MWR) is currently using the same type of sessions on their computer equipment for soldiers to use, most places you get a half hour to an hour and you're done unless someone ups the time for you.
I know this technically goes against the "free" part of it all, but it is a way for the system to work and free up the tables of people nursing one drink every 3-4 hours. It would also keep others on the outside of the shop from leeching on the connection as well.
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
Ever go to a coffee shop in a university town? It sucks. Students claim every table, and spread out their laptops, papers, books, backpacks etc. Then they sit there for hours nursing one drink. Then you can still offer free WiFi but in another model: Using a unique code on the drink/whatever receipt, the customers can surf the internet for so and so time. Then its over. Either go, either buy another drink! Voila!