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Wireless Networking Businesses Hardware Technology

Is WiFi Access Worth $10/hour? 346

Posted by timothy from the not-in-seattle-it's-not dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "This special report from CNET News.com carries an eloquent subtitle: 'Wireless expectations rose in 2003, but growth was hobbled by security concerns and unproven business models.' It's much worse than you think and I'm going to tell you why Wi-Fi will still not be broadly used in 2004 in this column. Technology columnists are usually looking at their own part of the world, in Silicon Valley or on the East Coast of the U.S. And obviously, their opinions are largely biased. Our world is much bigger than that. My arguments are based on real-world examples, both in Greece and in Paris. They're also based on costs of access. Paying $10 an hour for Wi-Fi access is almost twice as you pay for a movie. Would you pay $20 to see a movie? Probably not. So will you pay $10 to use a Wi-Fi connection for one hour? Certainly not."
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Is WiFi Access Worth $10/hour? More

Is WiFi Access Worth $10/hour?

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  • Not without security measures... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by metalion ( 734521 ) on Saturday December 27, 2003 @06:19PM (#7818872) Journal
    WiFi is certainly not worth $10 an hour. When I first heard about the T-Mobile Hotspots at the StarBucks locations, I had intiially thought that they were free to the customers. I however, quickly found out that this was not the case. True, T-Mobile has a comprehensive network of Hotspots but this still does not warrant the high price associated with simply using the WiFi connection at a StarBucks.

    perhaps, if the account that you pay for at StarBucks would at least allow for implementation of a RADIUS server and authentication by certificates, then perhaps the $10 and hour would be somewhat warranted. In the meantime, however, this just ends up being a factor of greed on the part of StarBucks and T-Mobile. Really, this should be a value adding benifit for the people who frequent StarBucks and pay $4 for a mocha not a service above and beyond the coffee.

    Oh, and have you ever been to a hotspot and tried to get some information from the workers there? Not to be rude, as I'm sure that they are proficient at making a Latte, but would it hurt to at least tell them a couple things about wireless networks? Everytime I ask them anything, I get shrugs and answers such as "I don't know. They just have a guy come in and check on that [the access point] every now and then". Note, these are not complicated questions either. I ask if this is an A,B, or G network and the barista's eyes glaze over.

    Oh well, at least free hotspots are much more plentiful in my hometown than the author of the article alludes to in France. Hey, word is they are even setting up the entire town next to me for a citywide WiFi network...

    • Re:Not without security measures... (Score:5, Funny)

      by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Saturday December 27, 2003 @06:45PM (#7818974) Homepage Journal
      "WiFi is certainly not worth $10 an hour."

      It is when I'm on a business trip.
      • It is when I'm on a business trip.

        It is when the alternative is flakey 3/MB GPRS running at a princely 28.8kbps.

    • Re:Not without security measures... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by gessel ( 310103 ) on Saturday December 27, 2003 @06:48PM (#7818985) Homepage
      It's not the security that I'd pay for, I use SSH anyway.

      The whole business model is idiotic. What you're paying for is billing - to bill all us random jerks who wander from place to place, and show up once, then again in some other state a few months later. It's not trivial and getting all the invoices out is what costs the money, most of them for 10 minutes of use ever month or two.

      I travel a lot on UAL, and the red carpet clubs have largely adopted T-Mobile. But they have free local POTS access. I pay $25 a month for AT&T Global and I can dialup locally almost anywhere in the world and get a reliable 28.8, usually better.

      Membership in the RCC isn't cheap, and I've been suggesting that they rethink wireless access as a loss-leader. The setup costs are, obviously, trivial, and they already have good network connectivity for their won operations. They could easily set up wireless access point and give away service for free. I suspect they'd make back their money with one additional member per site, and they'd probably recruit 100's if not 1000's.

      (I pay my fees for a stall I don't have to share my luggage with, a few free lattes a month, and the aforementioned free local phone service).

      I'm sure they're getting a few bucks from T-Mobile, but whatever it is, they're being penny wise and pound foolish. The same basically goes for all wireless service providers. What we need is a movement to set up nearby free/open WAPs and just kill fee for wireless stupidity once and for all.
      • Dead on. Free wireless at an RCC would cost-justify my expensing (yes, it's a verb now, leave me alone) the RCC membership.
      • Recently I was waiting at an airport gate in Philadelphia and noticed signs for AT&T wireless access. Eagerly launching my browser, I discovered that access would cost me $10 for a 24/hour period. While this initially seems like a good deal, I only had an hour or so to kill at the gate, not twenty-four, and so it occurred to me that I'd be paying $10 for about an hour of access. Checking their web page for AT&T's other airport locations, I determined that I wouldn't be able to use the access in my n

    • Re:Not without security measures... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ePhil_One ( 634771 ) on Saturday December 27, 2003 @07:05PM (#7819043) Journal
      Might be OK for starbucks to offer free access to folks who buy $4 Mocha's and other items, but what about Johnny Freeloader setting up camp outside their building? And realistically, if you don't think Starbucks is worth $4 a coffe, then you're not a Starbucks customer. If I were a Starbucks VP, I'd be bitching about how our business is selling great coffee, not internet access.

      You also act like the barista's should care about supporting this service. I'm an IT guy, my office offers coffee; if he walked into my office and asked me if I were using Columbian, African, or Brazilian coffee my eyes would glaze over, and I'd say "It comes in paper cups." Get off your high horse and understand that all the world does not share your passions.

      As for whether its worth $10/hour, thats for the marketplace to decide. If enoug buisnessmen come in who need to check their email before visiting a client; log in to update an important presentation, or have another need that worth $10/hour then they'll lower their price. Keep in mind their goal is not to become the leading Wireless ISP, its to provide a nice place to hang out while you sip $4 coffees and munch on $4 scones.

      • And realistically, if you don't think Starbucks is worth $4 a coffe, then you're not a Starbucks customer.

        Thing is, right now, I have lots of reasons to go somewhere other than Starbucks. Not only do the three coffeehouses in town I prefer make dramatically better coffee, but they all have free WiFi.

        Free WiFi wouldn't win me back as a Starbucks customer -- but it would at least give me one less reason not to be one.

      • Might be OK for starbucks to offer free access to folks who buy $4 Mocha's and other items, but what about Johnny Freeloader setting up camp outside their building? And realistically, if you don't think Starbucks is worth $4 a coffe, then you're not a Starbucks customer. If I were a Starbucks VP, I'd be bitching about how our business is selling great coffee, not internet access.

        Around here (Washington DC) there are plenty of places where you can pay $4 for a coffee, and plenty where you can use Wifi wh

      • Might be OK for starbucks to offer free access to folks who buy $4 Mocha's and other items, but what about Johnny Freeloader setting up camp outside their building?

        Easy. Give customers a generated username/password with purchase. Expire them after some period of time (say, 2 - 4 hours) to prevent re-use. Free wireless connectivity for customers, nothing for Johnny Freeloader.

        Get off your high horse and understand that all the world does not share your passions.

        Sharing passions has nothing to do with
    • I ask if this is an A,B, or G network and the barista's eyes glaze over.

      I should hope so. Quit trying to impress her with your technical knowledge and just assume it's a "b" network, like every other hotspot in the world.
    • Sheesh when I first heard about hotspots I grabbed my wife and started searching don't know about you but that'd be the only hotspot I would be willing to dish out $10 an hour for. Luckily I'm married so the going rate is waived for me ;)

    • Loss leader (Score:4, Interesting)

      by RT Alec ( 608475 ) * <alec@slashdot.chuckl[ ]om ['e.c' in gap]> on Saturday December 27, 2003 @07:16PM (#7819090) Homepage Journal

      One of the most efficient deployments, in terms of billing, is as a loss leader. By this I mean where you deploy it for free, with the hopes that the increase in traffic (foot traffic) will more than make up for the cost. This model works for coffee shops, hotels, some restaurants, and perhaps even housing or office complexes.

      Example (and shameless plug):
      I have set up just such a network in the plaza where my office is located, Lake Anne [lakeanne.net] (in Reston, Virginia). We have a T1, and have wired up four of the restaurants with access points. We are using 802.11b, no encryption, no signups, just come out and connect. The restaurants pay us for the access and to maintain the equipment, which goes a long way to defraying to cost of the T1. The restaurants have "WiFi Zone" stickers in the windows, and we are trying to get some local press coverage.

      Most days, I see at least a few people with their laptops in the various restuarants (one of them is, in fact, a coffee shop). I can hardly wait for the spring, since the access extends to the benches surrounding the dock (the plaza is at one end of a small lake).

      For the curious, we use a combination of Netgear wireless routers, Apple Airport Extremes, and a FreeBSD gateway/firewall (with a Sangoma T1 adapter [sangoma.com] in it-- no router necessary). Our F.A.Q. [lakeanne.net] (a work in progress) covers the most common questions people have to hook up, and the restaurants all have a printout of it just in case . The best part is, it works!

    • >WiFi is certainly not worth $10 an hour

      Of course not, but overpriced comms will remain with us until the dipshit beancounters and marketing suits who run the VCs who finance networking get real and stop trying to get RoI over six weeks instead of six years.

      In six years we won't be using WiFi, we'll have something else, but we'll still need a network. So instead of putting money exclusively into specific short-term technologies they should be putting it into generic long-term solutions with a current

    • I love t-mobile so much I bought the company.

      Ok, so I haven't shaved today, either, but I did write up a little Cool Use For Perl [perlmonks.org] on PerlMonks called Expresso Login [perlmonks.org].

      If you've been to Starbucks or Borders Books in Southern CA or South Texas, you very well may have seen me.

      I recommend Borders -- especially if you ever need a reference book while working...just walk over and get one, bring it back, sip Latte, work/surf, and enjoy.

      The only problem I've had was the onset of Christmas music prior to Thanksgivin

  • $10 an hour for WiFi? (Score:5, Funny)

    by thellamaman ( 631602 ) on Saturday December 27, 2003 @06:21PM (#7818879) Homepage
    I don't see where they're getting these figures. If you drive around slowly enough, all you need for an hour of WiFi access is gas, at most $5

  • Cost is relative (Score:3, Interesting)

    by devnulljapan ( 316200 ) on Saturday December 27, 2003 @06:21PM (#7818881)
    No I wouldn't, but several years ago when intenet access in Japan was a novelty a bar in my neighbourhood started offering internet access via a single PC on the bar top - cost Y1,000 per 30 minutes, which is give or take US$10 per 1/2 hour. People used it, but the bar eventually went bust. A bad business model? I'm sure people voting with their wallets will briing the price to a sensible level - everything's expensive at first.

    Just my Y2 worth...
  • I really think that it's up to the people to start non-profits and provide free wi-fi access. Hell, the whole thing could easily be run via grants, donations and volunteer labor. Especially if people could come up with a good way to scale it horizontally.

    Governments and corporations be damned, the world needs free internet access. Let's stop waiting for the beauracrats or the "market" to move society along. Let's do it ourselves.
    • Thats right!

      While we're at it, I need a place to stay next month when I'll be in your town. I probably won't get drunk and punch holes in your walls, pee in your sink, and puke in your sock drawer.

      There is an off chance I'll leave some herione and child porn wedged in your dresser, but I'm sure the cops will beleive you when you tell them it was me.

  • Not hourly, but per minute. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by blanks ( 108019 ) on Saturday December 27, 2003 @06:22PM (#7818885) Homepage Journal
    I run a few hotspots around Minneapolis. The best practice I have found it allow people to buy chunks of time, allowing them to use this time whenever they are in the hotspot. Allowing people to buy 10 hours for $30.00, and letting them use it over the span of 3 months has worked well for me.
    • This is what I've always wanted in Airports. I make connections through MSP on a fairly regular basis, but, at most, my layover's about two hours. I've often wanted to jump up onto the net, but couldn't justify the $7-10 (can't recall the price) for the two hours of service, of which, I'd use maybe 20 minutes to check and reply to e-mails. If I could buy a 10 hour block, and use it over the span of a year, I'd pay about $25 (inc. tax) or so for it. $30 seems to high, but, of course, I have no references oth

  • paying for wireless? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Make ( 95577 ) <max.kellermann@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Saturday December 27, 2003 @06:24PM (#7818897) Homepage
    where I live, there are 5+ unencrypted unsecured WLANs at any place. why in hell should I pay even one cent?
    • Because eventually those unsecured networks will get discovered by spammers, downloaders, or other bandwidth hogs, and suddenly they'll either become secured or have their plug pulled by the ISP. (Using consumer-priced bandwidth to provide service to others is a violation of nearly every TOS.) It's not a matter of the corperate interests taking over what used to be free, it's a result of the people giving away bandwidth for free figuring out that it never was that smart of an idea in the first place...

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday December 27, 2003 @06:55PM (#7819004)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • (then again, Starbucks doesn't care about bringing in customers...the fact that its there will kill off 70% of the coffee shops in its vacinity because most people would rather go with a brand name than quality).

        Reminds me of Tom Monaghan's Pizza Tiger. He had three pizza shops in the area with different names (He kept the names as he bought the stores, changing signs cost $$$). He used to hear customers say Store A's pizza was much better than store B's, even though the food was identical because he own

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • 10 dollars an hour (Score:4, Funny)

    by BoldAC ( 735721 ) on Saturday December 27, 2003 @06:25PM (#7818898)
    If the RIAA can say that each "illegal" download costs them a zillion dollars... then surely WiFi ISPs can value their services for $10 an hour.

    If you can download tens of songs per hour, a $10 investment in anonymous access is a steal! You can download hundreds of zillions worth of songs for that $10!

  • "Hot-Spot Pricing" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by man_ls ( 248470 ) on Saturday December 27, 2003 @06:27PM (#7818907)
    WiFi Hot-Spots in airports, cafes, etc. *beg* for pricing in a per-MB model.

    $2 for the first megabyte (minimum $2) and $0.03 per additional megabyte...That way, people who go in and do a lot of work (downloading Linux ISOs, etc. over the corporate connection) pay more for it, and the people who use it to check their e-mail, pay almost nothing.

    WiFi hotspots are one of the few places where a bandwidth-based billing model works.
    • And also at places like airports where there's no possiblity of residential WiFi to mooch off of...
    • $2 for the first megabyte (minimum $2) and $0.03 per additional megabyte...

      WiFi hotspots are one of the few places where a bandwidth-based billing model works.

      What you suggest sounds more like a traffic based model, as opposed to a bandwidth-based one. A bandwidth based model would be "$10 per 256k/hour" and would allow you as much traffic as you could get through your 256k pipe in one hour.

    • Re:"Hot-Spot Pricing" (Score:4, Interesting)

      by arth1 ( 260657 ) on Saturday December 27, 2003 @07:21PM (#7819125) Homepage Journal
      WiFi Hot-Spots in airports, cafes, etc. *beg* for pricing in a per-MB model.

      $2 for the first megabyte (minimum $2) and $0.03 per additional megabyte...That way, people who go in and do a lot of work (downloading Linux ISOs, etc. over the corporate connection) pay more for it, and the people who use it to check their e-mail, pay almost nothing.


      If all you want to do is check your email or the stock quotes, you don't want the hassle of waiting in line, ordering, paying and authenticating. It's not about whether it'll cost you $.15 or $2 -- it's the unneccessary bother.

      WiFi hotspots are one of the few places where a bandwidth-based billing model works


      No, it doesn't work. The overhead of being able to connect is so incredibly high that it's simply not convenient UNLESS you want to spend a long time at the hotspot.

      At most, Starbuck's and others can use WiFi hotspots to attract paying customers to choose their outfit and spend more time there, but not if they make it a hassle to use. Make the service open and free, and limit the hotspot output to 5mW or so, to get people to come inside and spend money.

      Regards,
      --
      *Art

    • Re:"Hot-Spot Pricing" (Score:3, Insightful)

      by isj ( 453011 )
      There are numerous possible billing models. You can pay a fixed amount per month; per MB; you can pay directly to the hotspot provider; you can pay via you ISP; The payment can be post-paid or pre-paid. Maybe you want to "top up" the pre-paid account. Maybe the pre-paid account should expire 72 hours after activation. Maybe the hotspot location wants to sponsor your access. It all boils down to 1 thing: Getting money from your pocket.
      The billing model has to be predictable and transparent. Most end-users do

  • After a quick R of TFA ... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Wingchild ( 212447 ) <brian.kern@gmail.com> on Saturday December 27, 2003 @06:28PM (#7818909)
    ... so the actual thrust of your complaint has to deal with the fact that, in places that aren't the United States, WiFi is traditionally charged for? And that the sums are not to your liking? Cry me a frickin' river.

    WiFi adoption in 2004 will likely exceed expectations in the United States precisely because tons of free hot spots are coming up stateside! Take a look at Baltimore, which is attempting to wire up the entire Inner Harbor area into a gigantic, free hotspot. As for whether or not other international localities will follow suit, it's really up to them -- recall also though that gas prices tend to be higher in Europe as an example that infrastructure there does not equal infrastructure here.

    Since the only argument that came out of the article was a long-winded whine about WiFi prices around the mediterranian, and had nothing to do with actual adoption of the technology in the coming year, I'd have been forced to mod it -1, Troll.
    • That's the beauty of these companies charging outrageous prices!....If this is their "introductory" price, imagine how much T-mobile, AT&T, and whoever will try to charge if they get all the freespace locked-up.... You'll have to "pay to ping"....with DHCP charged directly to your credit card w/ref to your national IT terrorist database number.

      They are pushing their customers to also become providers (and possible criminals depending on your Service Agreement)as well!....The higher the price, the quic

    • Re:After a quick R of TFA ... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Dr. Photo ( 640363 ) on Saturday December 27, 2003 @07:16PM (#7819088) Journal
      ... so the actual thrust of your complaint has to deal with the fact that, in places that aren't the United States, WiFi is traditionally charged for?

      Traditionally? That's preposterous. The last of the traditional WiFi clans were wiped out in the 1300s by the Black Plague, leaving the world without free wireless Internet access for nearly seven centuries. Truly those were dark times. :'-(

      The practice of charging for WiFi access dates back to the early 15th century, as Genoese and Venetian merchants took to the seas with wireless NICs and Access Points, handcrafted in northern Italy.

      It has been speculated that Napoleon's European campaigns were in fact motivated by his deep and abiding anger at the poor WiFi reception he got in Parisian coffee shops, due to his diminutive height.

      He took his armies all over Europe, looking for that one sweet hotspot where he could sit quietly and download porn.

      The British picked up on this, and set up a giant Access Point to lure the would-be conqueror to Waterloo, a strategem invented by General Lu Meng during the Wu dynasty. The rest, as they say, is history.
    • It's not just the Mediterranean or Europe in general where free WiFi is a thing of the past (if it ever existed). Once you get outside of a few major cities here in the U.S. (Seattle, Baltimore, maybe LA and NY), you're doing good if local businesses have even vaguely considered providing WiFi.

      For example, I have the misfortune to be located in the Wichita, KS area (2000 Census population: 344,284). The first Starbucks opened less than a year ago (and it charges for WiFi). The Borders on the east side of t

  • Free hotspots are the future (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rduke15 ( 721841 ) <rduke15@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Saturday December 27, 2003 @06:28PM (#7818912)
    In a hotel in France, they wanted over $20 for 24h. WiFi aceess. Guess what? I said no thanks and used my modem to get my mail. That cost me about $1 for the hotel-overcharged local phone call.

    But a hotel with free WiFi will get me renting their room.

    And if I go into a cafe, I will choose one with free WiFi over the other one next door.

    WiFi enabling a place like a cafe costs almost nothing. If they want to charge for the access, it costs much more to set up. That makes no sense. If I was a cafe or restaurant owner, I wouldn't hesitate a minute: buy a $100 (or less) access point, a router or firewall if it's not already there, hook it up to my existing ADSL or cable line, and let it be used for free and attract customers.
    • WiFi enabling a place like a cafe costs almost nothing.

      Unfortunately, that's a factoid. It looks true, but it's not.

      You can set up a wide-open WiFi for next to nothing. But, really you can't. You'll trip over your ISP's terms of service, and they'll hold you responsible when somebody starts spamming from your bandwidth or downloading copyrighted material...

      You can set up a secured WiFi point, but then you'll need to hire somebody to run that. Suddenly not so free anymore...
      • Bullshit. A cafe isn't going to get residential DSL and so won't be burdened by those onerous TOS. Furthermore, since they're not reselling the bandwidth there's even less to worry about.

        As for secured APs, what makes you think you have to hire someone just to change a password once a week? Let me guess, you're a consultant...

  • I can't imagine paying for wi-fi in a public place. Here , in Albuquerque, there's plenty of public places like bars, restraunts and even a donut shop, that have free wireless. I can't see why somebody would pay $10 for -just- wireless when they could pay for food or a drink and get the wireless thrown in for free.
  • Are there enough early adopters? If you can fund deployment of the network on their backs, you can later reduce prices to middle-class levels ($30/mo for 50 hrs)

    also, how's the time-counting work? If I connect for 15 mins, do I get billed for 15 mins, .5 hrs, or 1 hr? It doesn't take long to download email or upload that powerpoint file.

  • theft of service (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    So, is this the amount I can sue wardrivers/bandwidth thieves for when they hop onto my network?

  • Yes, I'd pay that.. or rather, I'll let my boss (Score:5, Insightful)

    by unfortunateson ( 527551 ) on Saturday December 27, 2003 @06:30PM (#7818927) Journal
    $10/hr isn't too much if you're a corporate-type, assuming you can VPN into your corporate net and get your critical e-mail, calendar updates, etc, or just download the latest version of tomorrow's presentation.

    Now there's probably cheaper options: cellphone-based (only 160KB for the best service out there), hotel-based broadband... but I'm sure the convenience wins out.

    Now, I've never needed it, but if I had needed it, my boss wouldn't bat an eye on the expense account. The only problems with that? (1) there's no line item for that on the expense system, and (2) I no longer am employed by that company.
  • I certainly wouldn't pay $10/hour if I were planning to be online for many hours. However, if I have a one hour layover in Chicago on a BOS->SFO flight, I might pay $10 to get online for that one hour. If you charge $10 for the first hour and $1 for subsequent hours, then you start making more sense.
  • Nobody has found a right business model for Wi-Fi today.

    Somebody imagined Sputnik some years ago, where volunteers/partners would run a self-contained router on their 802.11b-equipped computer, allowing access to roaming paying Sputnik customers, and receiving a share of the price of the connection time.

    It was a brilliant idea : anybody and their dogs could run the Sputnik CD and make some money when Sputnik customers connected, and the Sputnik company could cover the country with wifi in no time thanks
  • $10 / hour makes it somewhat like those phones in planes, really only useful for people who have corporations to pay for their expenses.

    So I imagine this will take off in downtown sections of major urban areas and in airports, but aside from that, the general public won't be interested until they have some reasonable, flat monthly fee (probably at or just slightly above current broadband charges, or as an addition to existing broadband service), which increasingly seems to be the only way people will pay f

  • Think Air Conditioning (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rdewald ( 229443 ) * <rdewald&gmail,com> on Saturday December 27, 2003 @06:41PM (#7818965) Homepage Journal
    There was a time when air conditioning was not universal. Places of business advertised and promoted the fact that their place of business was air conditioned and they managed the burden of the increased cost of air conditioning in order to attract customers.

    WiFi will follow the same trajectory. Wise businesses like restaurants and coffee shops will just provide it like air conditioning and leverage the log-on portal for advertising. I think it will be likely that they will filter on mac addressess and quota traffic over ports like tcp25 to prevent abuse, but eventually they will provide it for free. It will become the new air conditioning--the mark of a savvy service business.

    Until then, people will try to charge for it. The main problem with that is the variety of needs that customers will have. Some need it a lot, some need it once a year. Some just prefer to have it, some can't live without it. How do you price-model that?

    You don't.

    It's the new utility. Figure it into your overhead.
    • There's an old Chinese saying (go figure):

      Only the poor get cold, but everyone gets hot.

      Technology fucks over the poor and ruins a perfectly good bit of eternal wisdom. What's wit dat?

      So what do the poor do? They go to the Mall ( go figure).

      You've pretty much hit the nail on the head. I don't need internet access when I'm out, but I do like to be able to plug in my laptop to save the batteries. You won't let suck up a pennies worth of juice, or just can't seat me at an outlet? Well, I know places that w
    • Places of business advertised and promoted the fact that their place of business was air conditioned and they managed the burden of the increased cost of air conditioning in order to attract customers.

      Very true, and the same applies to employees. This is a great example of how the market continually refines itself to the needs of customers and employees, in addition to business owners. No force (government) was necessary to make this happen -- the business owners simply determined that it was in their bes

  • Argument Rejected: Apples != Oranges (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Saturday December 27, 2003 @06:43PM (#7818967) Homepage Journal
    "Paying $10 an hour for Wi-Fi access is almost twice as you pay for a movie."

    I'm sorry, but I don't see the relevance of comparing movies to internet access. Keep reading...

    "Is this an incentive to cross Paris, carrying your laptop, to meet a friend in a Wi-Fi connected cafe? I don't think so. As long as prices will remain that high, the utilization will remain very low. And of course, nobody will make money... As long as prices will remain that high, the utilization will remain very low. And of course, nobody will make money."

    I'm impressed with the short-sightedness of this guy's comment. Does he know anything about business? Economics? Everything starts off expensive and gets CHEAPER as time goes by, customers get used to the idea, and competition settles in. These services that run $6-$10 are NOT aimed to him, the causual user. They are for the business traveller. $10 to get on the net, wirelessly, at broadband speeds for an hour is reasonable, especially when it's expensible. If you can business expense it, it means you're paying $10 to be productive.

    How long will this pricing be in effect? Well, for one, they need to recoup their expenses. So the early adopters (the ones who'll really benefit from this service even if it is a bit pricey) will cover that. Then, over time, prices will go down, and if the service is popular, they'll expand their capacity. By then, the expenses of running that service will go down. And, perhaps, another business will be built on a similar service, and provide a little competition, causing services to go cheaper/better.

    It's as simple as that. Just about every technology service has worked that way. So what does this have to do with the price of a movie ticket? Nothing! This isn't an hour of entertainment, it's an hour of business dependent service. Prices don't stay at a constant level unless you're selling music CDs.
    • Exactly, just like cell phones.

      I remember back in the 80's when my Mom's boss had a cell phone. He paid something like $400/month for it but he made millions. It was a productivity tool.

      Zoom ahead 15 years. Now every punk kid at the mall has a cell phone and it costs them $40/month. They use them to goof off and keep in touch with friends.

      WiFi will be the same. It will just take a few years to get cheap. Not as many years as cell phones.
  • My Girlfriend works at a place that provides WiFi access for about that price. If I was looking to do some downloading without the MPAA or RIAA knowing who I was, it would be worth it. I can download 10 CDs worth of music in an hour. I can download 2 or 3 movies in an hour.

  • Last week's Economist had a very interesting article comparing early European coffee-houses to today's Internet.

    One of their points was that while hotspots in cafes are a good idea, it's unlikely they will make anyone a lot of money, since in places where there is competition among coffee houses, a proprietor would likely give away the access just like they buy magazines and don't charge the customers to read them.

    Put another way, I can set up good wireless in my urban cafe for less than a hundred bucks a
  • Currently Internet in Russia is expensive:

    Dialup: $0.30 to $1.00 per hour
    DSL: $30 to $100 per 1Gb

    The $10/hour WiFi is not that expensive by Russian standards

  • iPass vs. WiFi (Score:2, Insightful)

    by christowang ( 590054 )
    People are willing to use iPass which allows them to dial in with a local call around the world for ~$2.50 an hour depending on where they are located. The option of just getting an AOL Account which would provide about the samething for ~$22 a month. They now are offering Wifi. A comparision would be this for $10 an hour vs. $40 for Boingo service. I think people are willing to pay if they are not aware or don't want to deal with alternatives.
    • They dont provide a client for my chosen OS, donno about those 'ipass' type of cards..

      I have seen them in truckstops, but never bothered to get one. ( try asking for details, no one in the station knows diddly about them )

      Howevere there are other large ISPs, that have local access numbers in most big cities...

      Then all you have to do is VPN back home.. and you are set. ( and secure )
  • Your movie theater example is interesting. As I understand it, a movie theater is a place where you pay a cover charge, and then buy food and see a movie. The money is made by the sales of food, and not from the cover charge, which largely is paid to the supplier of the content. If the money were made by the cover charge, the tickets would be $20. As it is, average cost for a movie, which lasts $90 minutes, is $12-$15 a person.

    So, will people pay. To begin with, some are going to pay a minute or hour

  • Coffee shops (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 27, 2003 @06:56PM (#7819010)
    The coffee shop I hang out in Fort Collins CO offers free wireless. The cost of their setup was fairly minimal and the fact that people bring their own computers means that the sink nothing into having their own computers available.

    They make their money by attracting people and selling them things. They aren't in the ISP business. Wireless is just another item along the same lines as a couch or table to make the place comfortable.

    Has no one really looked at the total dichotomy of McDonald's and Starbuck's trying to do this? McDonald's is a fast food restaurant where they have spent tens of thousands of hours of designing a restaurant based upon throughput. The chairs are uncomfortable. The color scheme is not a good long term colorscheme. The designers wanted people to stay approximately 15 minutes and then leave.

    Starbucks is not much better, from the ones I have seen. It is also based upon getting people through the line and out of the store.

    Then add in that they are making a huge capital investment in an area outside their expertise at the corporate level. I don't know the details for this, but I suspect that the corporate headquarters is driving the architecture design and signing a lot of very large contracts for IT from 3rd party vendors. Looking at the local coffee shop here, I see about $200 in equipment a 20GB DSL at $55 a month (metered above that, but I do not know the rate. They purchased the DSL connection at it's yearly rate of $600). It's a total investment of around $1000.

    So..

    *NO*

    It's not worth $10 an hour. That coffee shop considers it more time and effort than it is to hire someone to track what is a marginal expense in their yearly budget. Hardware is cheap. Setting it up and occassionally fixing it is cheap. Headcount to add accounts and manage accounts is expensive as it having enough equipment to maintain those accounts. They aren't an ISP. They're a coffee shop. They sell coffee.

  • Well not for most people (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Saturday December 27, 2003 @07:02PM (#7819033)
    But I'm sure there are some that will pay. Like say you are the head network badass for a web hosting company. There are other people on staff to do support, but you are to go guy that knows the whole system and can fix any problem. This might be something your company would have you signed up for, along with data on your cell to make sure that even if you are on vacation or something you can get at the routers if need be. Expesnive, but not as expensive as a disaster taking out their bussiness. In time it'll get cheaper, and you'll see more adoptions (or it will die out and be replaced by something else).

    We're already seeing this with data on cellphones. Alltel said they could hook my up with something like 400 minutes of data time (144k where available) for like $40/month. Well that's not worth it to me, I mean the speed isn't that great and I'd burn through those minutes in a hurry. More worth it ot just find a network jack or access port (not hard in my job). However, there are plenty of people who I could see that as being appealing to. It's also much cheaper than what they used to offer. I'm sure in time it'll come down even more. If it starts looking like $10-$20 for 500+ minutes, I'll probably add it to my plan for when I'm out and about and as a backup is the DSL dies.

    Wireless access is very likely to follow the same pattern as wired access, eventually ending up as something that is quite affordable to most people that want it. However it's new and being developed now so the costs are currently going to be high. Even so, they'll see people that use it.

    As a different example take international cell phone roaming. It's something that's only receantly been possible since the providers got together. Even more receantly in the US since we only just got GSM. However, it now is possible. You can get an AT&T cellphone and places and recieve calls on one number in New York, Tokyo, London, Sydney and so on. So, what does it cost to do this? Well first you have to have a cell plan and minutes. It uses minutes as normal and has the normal overusage fees. Then there is the long distance cost (since you are usually calling long distance). Tends to be from $0.30-$1.00 per minut depending on where from and to. Then there is the international roaming fee. $1 per minute. So if you are in London calling the US you are spending somewhere around $1.30/minute plus using your minutes. Ouch

    However, people use it. Both my dad and his boss have AT&T GSM phones for just that reason. They find that the convienence of being reachable at a single number anywhere in the world outweighs the costs. In time, it will go down, and the same with wireless data.
  • For general wandering on the net paying that kind of money doesn't make sense, but for anyone travelling around, it could well.

    If the charge increment is less than a full hour, a 15 minute block would cost $2.50. I'd happily pay that. My laptop could suck down my mail, upload off-line written mails and still let me check a few news sites, all for $2.50.

    Sure, I'd rather pay $5 an hour or less, but these things do cost, and the mentality of "the net must be free!" really can't go on forever. Wh
    • No it is NOT reasonable. In my experience of travelling to the USA, the larger hotels (e,g, Sheraton) have broadband to the hotel room for $10 a DAY. That is reasonable. $10 an hour is not.

      Jon.

      • In my travels, I've noticed a bunch of wifi in hotels for free. Quite cool. Since it's quite easy to implement (easier than running cat 5) the added benefit does attract customers. Not to insult anyone, but I thought there would be nothing but 7 kinds of grits, oppressing heat and humidity and waitresses muttering "fucking yankees" in hotels in the south, but was quite pleasantly surprised to find FREE wifi - in a small town in Alabama! (BTW, we experienced those other things too ;)

        It comes down to this, i

  • No need to pay (Score:3, Interesting)

    by AirLace ( 86148 ) on Saturday December 27, 2003 @07:13PM (#7819071)
    Out here in the UK, BT charges 15/hour for an hour of 802.11b connectivity for their "OpenZone" service. They cite Microsoft Windows as a system requirement but you can get connectivity in Linux using IP-over-DNS, with the added benefit that it's absolutely free. I'd probably have willing to pay a reasonable amount for their service, but as long as they refuse to support Linux, people are just going to continue to freeload with IP-over-DNS.

  • Free access at Universities (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Planetes ( 6649 ) on Saturday December 27, 2003 @07:14PM (#7819074)
    I'm curious about availability at major universities. Here at the University of Central Florida [ucf.edu] we have free access in most of the newer buildings and several outdoor areas. The coverage is growing and notable currently covered areas include the bookstore (which is run by Barnes and Noble and has the obligatory Starbucks), the Math and Physics building, the Student Union [ucf.edu] (along with areas surrouding it) and Engineering [ucf.edu]. Do other schools have widespread access for students and faculty?

    Daniel
    Aerospace Engineering major
  • I understand hotspots in places like Airports and other such places where people need to do business on the go, but it seems like too much we are too hard to "disconnect" and look up. Leave the computer at home when you go out to lunch or to starbucks for coffee. We're all in favor of jumping into a chat room to talk to people hundreds of miles away, but we don't show the same enthusiasm for chatting with people around us. Don't get me wrong, having net access is fun, but meeting the people around you a

  • pay? for wireless? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by loraksus ( 171574 )
    Ok, a couple of things.
    1. Community groups have essentially killed the market in a lot of cities. If someone can get it free, they won't pay. These are legitimate organizations, many federal non-profits - regardless of what Dvorak might think.
    www.personaltelco.net is quite active in Portland, OR. If I were to step out on a limb, I would say that any corp wanting to unwire the downtown area would fail because of the personaltelco nodes that are already active.
    (now some 12 year old nUb will "hack" the ptp wi

  • Hotel Ripoff (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jonman_d ( 465049 ) <nemilar&optonline,net> on Saturday December 27, 2003 @07:35PM (#7819183) Homepage Journal
    I recently stayed at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Washington D.C; They've got a nice gig going of charging $10 (or was it 15? I can't remember) for 15 minutes of wired access. Of course, staying there for 4 days, I had no real choice but to connect at least once.

    Classic example of "the customer has no choice, so he'll pay whatever we charge."
  • WiFi is worth $10 per hour if I'm at a hotel and I only have an hour before I head to a conference or meeting and I need to check my e-mail. To compare it to the cost of a movie is silly; of course very few people are going to pay $10 to surf the web for fun, but for business travelers on the go, it may be perfectly acceptable to pay $10 an hour plus to get on the net on their own laptop. That being said, companies have to make a choice. They can either market themselves as a business solution and charg

  • Slightly OT (Score:3, Informative)

    by Cytlid ( 95255 ) on Saturday December 27, 2003 @07:44PM (#7819219)
    My wife and I won a cruise (!) this last past year, in October, to the western carribean. On the ship, internet access was 50 cents a minute (!) but while we were in Jamaica, I wanted to say hi to some friends. There was this outdoor bar in Ochos Rios with about 6 machines setup... I think I paid $2.50 for 15 mins, which figures out to the $10/hr rate. I thought it was fair. I guess it depends on what you wanna do... I hopped on IRC, instant messenger, said hey to some friends (most were working anyhow!) and checked webmail, and of course, slashdot.

    So I guess my point is, sure, why not? I paid close to the $10/hr rate for *wired* access, it would be fair enough for wireless. Also, most of the places I can think of getting online away from home (airports, hotels, etc) why would someone want to be online for a few hours? Unless you're addicted to Everquest or something...

  • It's still early (Score:2, Insightful)

    by jamesl ( 106902 )
    In the early days of Cell Phones, just after the earth cooled, the monthly fee included a whole 30 minutes of air time. Roaming cost a buck a minute and service was spotty.

    The day will come when a few bucks a month will get you more wireless access than you can possibly use.

    New stuff is always expensive. In a competitive environment, prices come down to cost plus a small profit margin. If you want to project the price of wireless access in a few years, figure out how much it will cost (hardware, labor, ca

  • Bars don't charge to watch sports on TV (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Roblimo ( 357 ) on Saturday December 27, 2003 @08:37PM (#7819430) Homepage Journal
    It's a lot cheaper for a bar or restaurant to provide free WiFi than to subscribe to a commercial cable TV or satellite sports provider, but I've never had the owner of a sports bar try to charge me to watch a Bucs game.

    Sometimes I like to go to a bar to watch games that aren't being shown where I live; I'm not such a big fan that I want to watch out-of-area teams often enough to pay for one of those expensive "sports pass" satellite deals, and besides, it's often nice to sit with other people who enjoy the game instead of with my wife, who leaves the room when I put on a football game and barely tolerates baseball.

    Obvously bar owners figure sports TV is worth the cost. There's no question that it brings in business -- including mine now and then. I'm not sure enough people have wireless-equipped laptops or PDAs for free wireless to pay off quite yet in most parts of the world for establishments that put it in, but that day will come.

    I said all of this in a NewsForge article [newsforge.com] last May, BTW.

    - Robin

  • How does starbucks make money? Off coffee! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by HockeyPuck ( 141947 ) on Saturday December 27, 2003 @08:48PM (#7819486)
    Ok, so you go into the shop, get a $5 cup of coffee. Letsay the avg person spends 15-30 minutes in the store actually drinking it.

    If a person spends an hour or so at the store, how many of them actually buy a second cup? At the local starbucks (sanjose), there's always a crowd outfront in the evenings. They're there every friday/saturday night, from dusk till dawn it seems.

    If you put in Wi-Fi, do you think the people will buy 2-3 cups of coffee for the 2-3hrs they may spend online?

    It all comes down to $$/hr. Either $10/hr (for 1cup every 30minutes) or 1hr online (at $10/hr).

    I personally wouldn't want people buying one cup of coffee and then surfing the web for free over the span of 2hours. Its like 'window shopping', but in this case your in my shop with no intention of buying (other than a 'token' cup). Or possibly no cup at all.

  • $10 a DAY that is, not an hour (Score:3, Informative)

    by saikou ( 211301 ) on Saturday December 27, 2003 @09:48PM (#7819695) Homepage
    What I don't understand, is why people don't research anything and then bitch about "how expensive it is". It is NOT expensive.
    If anyone actually bothered to go to T-Mobile web site and see the service plans [t-mobile.com], you would know you can get DAY pass for $10. And if you have T-Mobile cell phone, unlimited WiFi is $20 a month. Beats many dial up providers by mobility AND price.
    And, while on the subject, WiFi might become even less needed as same T-Mobile now offers free WAP browsing, and unlimited "corporate" GPRS is also $10.

    Access is getting cheaper and cheaper, allthough there will always be providers, that try to charge twice as much for the same service.

  • "Broadband wireless" already in DC, San Diego (Score:3, Informative)

    by michaelmalak ( 91262 ) <michael@michaelmalak.com> on Saturday December 27, 2003 @10:01PM (#7819742) Homepage
    Depending on WiFi for a net connection is like carrying around a 900 MHz cordless phone and expecting to be able to make long distance calls from wherever you happen to be.

    The future is "wireless broadband" (somewhat tied to "3G"), available [verizonwireless.com] since October in Washington, DC and San Diego with speeds advertised as up to 2mbps, 300-500kbps typical.

    WiFi's not going away, of course -- people will still want to connect their homes that were built before 2002. It could also serve as a tool to building a separate Internet away from excessive [underreported.com] corporate/government control, though it seems to me it would be too easy to jam -- laser would probably be better.

    All this hype about WiFi reminds me of 1997, when 1.5mbps DSL was available in limited areas around Washington, DC, and the rest of the country was harping on how to boost modem speeds from 40kpbs to a "full" 56kpbs.

  • Free competition (Score:3, Redundant)

    by Bill Kendrick ( 19287 ) <bill@newbreedsoftware.com> on Saturday December 27, 2003 @11:58PM (#7820101) Homepage
    I find it bizarre that people would go to somewhere like Starbucks, where you have to pay for the T-Mobile(?) wireless access, when, here in Davis Calif., at least, you can walk literally a few blocks away and go to another coffee shop which has completely free wireless (and better snacks :^) ) Walk another block up, and there's yet ANOTHER cafe with free, open wireless.

    There's a southwest restaurant near where I live in Davis, and they have wireless you have to pay for. They now advertise "free wireless with $5 purchase," so I pulled by Zaurus out one time and tried it. It was only 20 minutes of access! (Quick calculation... that's $15-food-dollars per hour!)

    Fortunately, at another shopping center where I live, there's yet another coffee shop with wireless. I'm lucky enough to have landed a job where I get to work from home, so I now use them as free office space. Completely free wireless... all I need to do is buy some coffee (and that's not even a rule, like it is at some places).

    I doubt $10/hr wireless will last in places where there's demand for wireless, because a $50/month DSL line isn't that much, compared to the increased business you get for having free internet...

    Sufficed to say, when UC Davis was in finals, this place got REALLY busy... lots of laptops.

  • Good God.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CatOne ( 655161 ) on Sunday December 28, 2003 @01:04AM (#7820311)
    $10/hour? Why, when you can probably search networks and find another network that's FREE which you can also access from Starbucks(TM)?

    Hell, at home I can see 3 open access points, I don't even have to use my own! Of course, it's the only encrypted one of the bunch ;-)

  • access should be free (Score:3, Informative)

    by samantha ( 68231 ) * on Sunday December 28, 2003 @05:48AM (#7821100) Homepage
    Every country that dares consider itself developed should provide free and ubiquitous wireless "last mile" access throughout its territory. Some day soon any country that wants to remain competitive will. In the US we need to get over the now defunct partitioning of spectrum for huge dollars. Otherwise we will be nickle and dimed into technological oblivion as the big players try to piecemeal recoup their huge spectrum licenising outlays.

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