Microsoft Pushing Municipal Wi-Fi

PreacherTom writes "Microsoft is moving to be the latest player to bring its formidable weight to bear in the growing Wi-Fi market. The software giant's recent deal to provide content and services through partnership with municipal Wi-Fi operator MetroFi in Portland, Ore., will intensify the battle between Google, Yahoo!, and MSN for online traffic. Why the focus? Content providers who capture the growing municipal Wi-Fi market will be in a better position to enjoy higher traffic to their sites and greater customer loyalty — and, as a result, grab a greater share of the $16 billion of expected online advertising dollars this year, according to consultancy eMarketer. 'It's a battle for eyeballs,' says Matt Rosoff, an analyst with the consultancy firm 'Directions on Microsoft'."

Comments

Good for them..

[SetarconeX]

Much as I'm loathe to say anything good about Microsoft, I'd probably install Vista on my right eye if Microsoft could get me some decent municipal wifi in the cities I frequent. Anything which brings about more free wifi is a good thing in my book.

Re:Good for them..

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you then give your left eye to Satan for free airfare? You keep this shit up and you're gonna end up blind, sir.

How cost-effective are large WiFi networks?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

The range on a single AP is not that great, even with a high power, high sensitivity AP, it would seem like you would want one on every other street light, and that's not cheap. In my experience, a mesh isn't very good at making a stable connection, and wiring every fourth AP doesn't sound very cheap either.

Microsoft says, "Me Too!"

[businessnerd]

It seems Microsoft has been doing a lot of following and not much leading. Google really lead the way with the whole free public WiFi and now Microsoft is jumping in the ring. Apple revolutionizes the digital music scene, so Microsoft answers (years later mind you) with the Zune. Google launches a hosted word processor and spreadsheet app. and Microsoft just announced that they too will be releasing such apps with Office Live. Now I understand that Microsoft needs to either get on board or get left behind, but we hardly ever see Microsoft actually lead the way. To me it seems odd that the largest software company in the world relies on other companies ideas. You would think with their size and their cash, they would have more fresh, industry leading ideas coming out of their R&D department. I'm not too shocked though, because this has been the model Microsoft has taken since the beginning of their existence. MS-DOS was a ripoff of CP/M or (insert DOS-like OS here) and the idea of the mouse driven GUI was ripped off from Apple.

Does anyone have an example of a truly original idea that came out of Microsoft AND was successful industry leader?

Re:Microsoft says, "Me Too!"

[tttonyyy]

You're forgetting - the reason Microsoft are so successful is because they're driven by profitability, not by being a technology leader. It just so happens that they're very good at taking other people's ideas and implementing them in a way that works and that people (in general) will want; they're also good at market research, it would seem.

Inventing new stuff is one thing - producing it in a mass-market easy-to-digest way is another. The latter is where the money is.

Municipal Wifi sounds great on paper BUT...

[SkipNewarkDE]

The whole municipal wifi thing sounds great on paper, but the reality of the service it delivers is sorely lacking. I stayed in a hotel in Mountain View which was covered by Google's municipal wifi. The connection was flakey, slow and unreliable. Indeed, in retrospect, I find it almost comical that local cable companies and ISPs are screaming against this sort of thing as being anticompetitive. The fact of the matter is that it sort of works, but not very well. Get a few users on it, and a few meters of walls, trees, whatever, through in some RFI, and it makes for a really crappy internet access experience.