Google and other companies are in a mad rush to create city-wide wifi hotspots in various cities.
The pols are sucked in and all they can do is brag and drool about it.
But what’s in it for the company?
Are they going to be full of ads you wouldn’t get on a regular service?
Are they going to be running at a crappy bandwidth or die at peak hours?
Are they going to charge as “upgraded” services everyone get bundeled with their paid services?
I know the pols are too dumb to ask.
This was headed for GQ when I typed it.
Moved to GQ. Wirelessly.
I’ve never seen the details about plans like these, but I suspect a lot of places will gladly offer free wi-fi as an incentive to get you into the area. If you are sitting on a park bench with your laptop, you need to go somewhere nearby when you get hungry or thirsty. Or, maybe you’ll see something in a shop window that you wouldn’t have bothered looking for had you not seen it, and you buy something you hadn’t planned on. In other words, offering free wi-fi gets people into an area where you want to get more people into. This translates into more sales for businesses in that area, and more taxes for the politician types.
Compared to other forms of advertising to get people into areas where you want them, wi-fi is probably pretty darn cheap and effective.
I can check it out on Ebay!
1st question:
Is “free” TV (CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox) really free?
Answer that and then you know the business model behind “free” Wi-Fi.
If its anything like the free dial up accounts that started to proliferate back in the mid to late nineties, then yes, your agreeing to view a certain amount of commercial traffic, or using a propriatary browser that will show a certain amount of paid ads.
I am going to guess that the easiest way to do it, would be to use local merchants and national chains like coke and McDonalds and what not to provide the actual ads, along with mom and pops, and local restaurants/bars. Register online and get the wep key.
Then offer a monthly rate for people who dont want to view the ads, to make up the other part of the business model.
Declan
Some of them are “free” only in the sense that they were built and are maintained by the city using your tax money, and so you can use them ‘for free’ without any additional charges.
Generally, these cities have found that when they add up the costs the city is already paying for data transmissions to fire, police, garbage, street repair vehicles, and between various city offices, schools, parks, libraries, etc., they find that they can operate a full city-wide wi-fi network for less!
And, when building that network, there is very little added cost to provide massive over-capacity, enough to allow free wi-fi access to all city residents. Though many are deciding to charge at least a minimal amount for the service, supposedly to provide funds for maintenance & possible future upgrades.
A nearby small town is providing wi-fi access over the whole town, but residents are charged for access: I think it’s $3.50 per month for individual service, and limited to 1.5Mb/second upload speed (download is 12.5 Mb/second).