Free WiFi Not Crazy After All
posted on july 2, 2003, tag: tech
The other day I wrote an entry about Starbucks not having free WiFi Internet service. In response, Shawn wrote an entry about how crazy I was, basically stating that wishing for free WiFi is not only stupid, but not at all reasonable. My reaction to this, and to anyone who believes that, is still the same: free WiFi is not crazy, is not unreasonable, and is worth it. But I also conceded that maybe my views on this matter are not in the same tone as people from this area (New York). Other places, however, have similar ideas.
For instance, there's WiFi Charlottetown (via aov), a group of individuals in Charlottetown, PEI (Canada) who are trying to create a free WiFi network in their entire town. This is something I think could be a really positive and fantastic idea if it works out (and it seems to be). The basic idea is that a bunch of people donate time or bandwidth or money, and eventually the whole town has free and open WiFi access.
Ellie also sent me a Seattle Times article about WiFi becoming wide-spread in small coffee shops and stores in Seattle. The article describes how small business owners are finding that offering this service is attracting more customers and helping out with word-of-mouth advertising. From the article:
The typical proprietor or chief executive of these venues says "free" can have a way of paying for itself by bringing in more repeat customers and encouraging people to linger in the shop and spend a little more money.
Perhaps I'm being too positive, but I believe free WiFi is a cause worth supporting. I'm actually quite surprised that more areas in NYC aren't doing this (maybe I just don't know about them). In areas like Williamsburg, I wish more people thought like they have been in Charlottetown. I think that creating a free WiFi network would be a great thing—not only for the current residents of the area, but for future residents too. I'm sure there are plenty of people interested in this sort of thing—maybe they just don't know where to start.
In a place like New York City, a place where everything is fast and on the cutting edge, I expect a technological idea like this to be supported and nurtured. Instead, I'm apparently in the minority of this opinion. I think that's crummy.
Update: Please see the entry entitled More On WiFi for more on this subject.
Comments
There are 4 comments, comments are closed
Tarsh on 07/03/2003:
Unfortunately i doubt htis will happen, theyw anted the interenet to be free and look what happened to that. It would be a good idea to have free 56k wifi for email transfers and the such, users wanting faster access to the networks would have to pay a month fee.
Shawn on 07/03/2003:
Here I am!
Free Wi-Fi is fantastic. I support it. Who wouldn't? It is not ridiculous. But you are still not entitled to it and Starbucks still has every right to charge for it, make money and succeed or fail. They very well may fail.
Here's an issue: legally I have no right to announce my wireless internet here at home is public. I'd violate my TOS with Time Warner. If cable companies haven't caught on yet, they will soon. Point: things will start changing if a lot of people start giving away their home Wi-Fi. Bottom line: nothing is free. Who is paying for it? Can it be non-metered and sustainable as a business? Propose answers to these questions rather than simply ask them.
One last thing. Again I strayed from my most important point: Whining about what is not free is not very becoming of you, and gets you nowhere quick.
Tone explanation: not a shred of anger, only pure intellectual zeal.
Garrett on 07/03/2003:
I've posted an additional (and the last) entry on the subject. This entry answers some of your questions, Shawn, and puts a close to the matter.
Gardog on 10/31/2003:
It is interesting that our local paper recently reported on a free Wi-Fi venture which is being blocked by business interests. It seems that the parks and recreation department of the local city government in Minneapolis determined that it would be less expensive ($300,000 vs. $1,500,000) to install a city wide high powered Wi-Fi netowrk for their various needs than to put in a wireline network to all of the same locations. They have many locations scattered throughout the city to provide security and such for the city parks network. Side benefits above and beyond the simple cost advantage would include being able to to put security beacons, call boxes and the like in places to which it is impossible to run traditional wired lines.
In any case, they felt that the Wi-Fi setup would provide them the additional feature of offering a truly free city wide Wi-Fi service. They would have limited bandwidth, but more than enough to accommodate a large number of users.
The local commercial ISP vendors were appalled! Imagine a city government service which would compete with good, honest vendors charging each of their 150,000 or so local customers $20 per month for a service which could be replaced by a one time city investment of $300,000. Never mind the fact that several of those vendors could easily afford the $300,000 themselves. That wasn't the point! What was important was that people would be getting something for FREE, robbing the business commmunity of the opportunity to charge for it. What an outrageous misuse of public funds!
The upshot is that the city will probably install the Wi-Fi equipment anyway (they are not quite so stupid as to spend the $1,500,000 for an inferior wireline solution), but they will invoke encryption to keep other users out. The city parks department did propose a compromise solution in which they would charge a $15.00 average fee on a sliding schedule and then contract the existing ISP companis to run servers for the paying users, and use a small part of the funds for special parks programs, but that did not provide a sufficient profit margin to satisfy the existing ISPs.
So what is a poor citizen like me to do? Well, I'm thinking of getting myself a few access points to set up my own network around my own suburb to try to drive those arrogant jerks out of business myself! I'd appreciate any advice anyone could give me for a technical solution.