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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."
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.