Will Free Wi-Fi Become the Norm?
I'm a big fan of free Wi-Fi and appreciate it when coffee shops, hotels and other businesses are nice enough to let visitors use their laptops to surf the Web for free. Last year, for example, Starbucks started offering two hours of free service a day for those who purchase and register a Starbucks card.
And soon you'll be able to get Wi-Fi with your French fries when McDonalds rolls out its free service in January. The company last week announced that it will drop its $2.95 Wi-Fi fee.
The move comes just a few months after the world's largest burger chain launched its nationwide rollout of McCaf?s featuring cappuccinos, lattes and sugary coffee drinks not unlike those on the menu at Starbucks.
While I can appreciate surfing the Web at Starbucks over a cup of coffee or two, I'm not sold on the idea of spending a leisurely afternoon sitting in one of McDonald's plastic chairs over a laptop and a large order of fries. Yet, I certainly can envision popping into a McDonald's for a few minutes to check my e-mail or quickly visit a Web site or two.
Most striking about this announcement is that McDonald's, along with a number of other companies, has put a price tag on Wi-Fi, and that price is $0 per hour. If this trend continues, we could get to a place where Internet access is simply part of the plumbing of our lives.
Already Google provides free Wi-Fi service to people in its home town of Mountain View, California and Google is subsidizing free Wi-Fi on all Virgin America flights until Jan. 15.
Virgin America - along with American Delta, United and AirTran - usually charges $10-$12 for access to its Gogo in-flight Internet service during a cross-country flight. All Virgin America planes are equipped for Wi-Fi. AirTran offers Wi-Fi on all flights departing from the United States, while the others offer it on "select" flights.
I don't expect the airlines to give away Wi-Fi, unless they are forced to for competitive reasons, but many hotels now offer it for free. You can almost count on free Wi-Fi when you stay at a low- or moderately priced hotel chain like Best Western or Red Roof Inn, but you often have to pay as much as $15 a day to access it at more expensive hotels.
In Germany last year, I paid the equivalent of $30 a day for Wi-Fi access at a five-star Berlin hotel. If a hotel doesn't offer free Wi-Fi for all guests, I now ask if there is a way to get it for free. Some hotels will waive the charge if you join their rewards program.
Of course, Wi-Fi isn't the only wireless way to get on the Internet. All of the major cell phone carriers offer wireless broadband access via their data networks, but it's not cheap. The going rate for a 5-gigabyte-a-month wireless broadband plan for PCs is $60 a month. It's worth it if you travel a great deal but not if you're just an occasional user. Verizon offers a 250-megabyte-a-month plan for $40, but you can quickly exceed that amount of data if you use the service to download music or video.
Some netbooks have wireless broadband built in and, in some cases, you can get the netbook free or for a greatly reduced price by signing up for a two-year broadband plan. But before you commit yourself to $1,400 for those two years of service, you had better think about whether you're going to use it enough to justify the expense.
Still, I've taken a cellular modem with me on a few trips to the East Coast, and I can testify that it does make life a lot easier to be able to count on access from virtually anywhere. A few weeks ago I was able to finish writing and then send in my column during a 45-minute ride from Dulles Airport to Washington, D.C. Not only was I able to meet my deadline, but it made the ride seem a lot shorter.
Over the next couple of years, all the major cellular carriers will be introducing so-called 4G networks with faster data rates, added capacity and wider penetration. My hope is that wireless broadband supply will so outstrip demand that they will wind up lowering prices to increase network usage. If the pricing model becomes attractive enough, I can see millions of people adopting the service simply for the convenience of never having to hunt for a hot spot.
In the meantime, "I'm Lovin' " the idea of getting free Wi-Fi access when I visit my local McDonald's next month. Too bad that a Big Mac, a medium fries and a medium Coke add up to more than 1,100 calories.
This column is adapted from one that appeared in the San Jose Mercury News.
Copyright 2010 CBS. All rights reserved. And soon you'll be able to get Wi-Fi with your French fries when McDonalds rolls out its free service in January. The company last week announced that it will drop its $2.95 Wi-Fi fee.
The move comes just a few months after the world's largest burger chain launched its nationwide rollout of McCaf?s featuring cappuccinos, lattes and sugary coffee drinks not unlike those on the menu at Starbucks.
While I can appreciate surfing the Web at Starbucks over a cup of coffee or two, I'm not sold on the idea of spending a leisurely afternoon sitting in one of McDonald's plastic chairs over a laptop and a large order of fries. Yet, I certainly can envision popping into a McDonald's for a few minutes to check my e-mail or quickly visit a Web site or two.
Most striking about this announcement is that McDonald's, along with a number of other companies, has put a price tag on Wi-Fi, and that price is $0 per hour. If this trend continues, we could get to a place where Internet access is simply part of the plumbing of our lives.
Already Google provides free Wi-Fi service to people in its home town of Mountain View, California and Google is subsidizing free Wi-Fi on all Virgin America flights until Jan. 15.
Virgin America - along with American Delta, United and AirTran - usually charges $10-$12 for access to its Gogo in-flight Internet service during a cross-country flight. All Virgin America planes are equipped for Wi-Fi. AirTran offers Wi-Fi on all flights departing from the United States, while the others offer it on "select" flights.
I don't expect the airlines to give away Wi-Fi, unless they are forced to for competitive reasons, but many hotels now offer it for free. You can almost count on free Wi-Fi when you stay at a low- or moderately priced hotel chain like Best Western or Red Roof Inn, but you often have to pay as much as $15 a day to access it at more expensive hotels.
In Germany last year, I paid the equivalent of $30 a day for Wi-Fi access at a five-star Berlin hotel. If a hotel doesn't offer free Wi-Fi for all guests, I now ask if there is a way to get it for free. Some hotels will waive the charge if you join their rewards program.
Of course, Wi-Fi isn't the only wireless way to get on the Internet. All of the major cell phone carriers offer wireless broadband access via their data networks, but it's not cheap. The going rate for a 5-gigabyte-a-month wireless broadband plan for PCs is $60 a month. It's worth it if you travel a great deal but not if you're just an occasional user. Verizon offers a 250-megabyte-a-month plan for $40, but you can quickly exceed that amount of data if you use the service to download music or video.
Some netbooks have wireless broadband built in and, in some cases, you can get the netbook free or for a greatly reduced price by signing up for a two-year broadband plan. But before you commit yourself to $1,400 for those two years of service, you had better think about whether you're going to use it enough to justify the expense.
Still, I've taken a cellular modem with me on a few trips to the East Coast, and I can testify that it does make life a lot easier to be able to count on access from virtually anywhere. A few weeks ago I was able to finish writing and then send in my column during a 45-minute ride from Dulles Airport to Washington, D.C. Not only was I able to meet my deadline, but it made the ride seem a lot shorter.
Over the next couple of years, all the major cellular carriers will be introducing so-called 4G networks with faster data rates, added capacity and wider penetration. My hope is that wireless broadband supply will so outstrip demand that they will wind up lowering prices to increase network usage. If the pricing model becomes attractive enough, I can see millions of people adopting the service simply for the convenience of never having to hunt for a hot spot.
In the meantime, "I'm Lovin' " the idea of getting free Wi-Fi access when I visit my local McDonald's next month. Too bad that a Big Mac, a medium fries and a medium Coke add up to more than 1,100 calories.
This column is adapted from one that appeared in the San Jose Mercury News.
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You know absolutely nothing about my company Wired Towns, and our approach. Yet you are happy to assume all sorts of things.
I stay away from DSL entirely. It's crap. Full duplex fixed wireless at 10 Mbps in places like Rockefeller Center and Times Square and Union Square. High capacity, 100+ simultaneous users.
I use antennas that cost $8000 list. No interest in cheap routers. Again, this is about large scale deployments.
I do not undertake any project below $100K. Anything else is not worth it. This is about trying to press the envelope on what's possible.
Your point on ad blocking is well taken, people as savvy as you are can implement this easily. But hyperlocal ads are things that people don't want to necessarily block. If its not useful, I don't want it up there on the page.
Ads can be sponsor graphics too, as with NBC in Rockefeller Plaza and Yahoo in Times Square. You'd block that too? I can make that sponsor graphic persist across the entire users session. Nothing you can do about it. And that pays for the Wi-Fi.
I would expect that ad blocking will come to devices soon enough. 70% of my traffic is iPhones, iTouches, Blackberries, Androids. But if the ads are relevant, and part of the very fabric of the page, I don't think you could or would want to block, for the most part.
In sum, you spin a bunch of strawman arguments -- imagining what I might be doing in my business. I have no interest, though, in servicing mom and pop operations with a cheap router fed by some lousy DSL line and spamming their customers with ads. If it's not advancing public Wi-Fi, I am not interested.
Increasingly, free Wi-Fi is being offered to promote brands. Increasingly, businesses and business improvement districts are offering free Wi-Fi as a means of drawing people into stores, people with the latest Wi-Fi gadgets.
As Wi-Fi devices continue to flood the market, new revenue streams that support a free model will appear -- couponing, advertising, location-based services.
CBS Mobile attempted two years ago to light up all of Manhattan between 59th and 42nd from 6th to 8th Avenues with the revenue coming from hyperlocal advertising. They weren't wrong, they were early.
One should not unfortunately look for price relief from the carriers for cellular broadband. The fact is that data traffic from mobile devices is now choking their networks. AT+T has sold a boatload of iPhones. As a result, their network is suffering terribly. They and others -- Verizon, T-Mobile, etc. are trying to offload as much traffic as they can from their cellular to their Wi-Fi networks. Will they offer theae Wi-Fi networks for free? If price motivates customers to migrate off the cell network for their data traffic, they will do so.
Wi-Fi will not help you upload an article while driving from the airport. That will still be cellular. But as the networks continue to spread and improve, Wi-Fi will become a ubiquitous amenity, especially for those who can afford a $300 device (iTouch, Nexus One) but not $760 a year in data charges.
Rubbish. I've worked for an ISP for over a decade and the line about ad-based wifi is nothing more than sales flimflam designed to get the dumb business owners suckered into putting the initial investment into deploying large-scale wireless networks like your company installs.
The fact is that putting up a SMALL wireless transmitter that covers just the business itself does not require a company like yours, is rediculously cheap to do, and can be done by most untrained people. All you need is a decent access point and an external, larger, antenna instead of those crummy "cell phone" antennas that the factory slaps on most of the transmitters.
Future wifi is going to be free, and it's NEVER going to develop those so-called "couponing, advertising, location-based services" because the revenue stream from them ISN'T NEEDED for 99% of potential installations out there. What does it cost your typical restaurant to drop a DSL line in and a wifi transmitter on it? About $40 a month and an installation cost of $50. And if the business is part of a chain well then they already are going to have to have the DSL line in there anyway to transmit the end-of-day financial information to the accounting office. You don't need the hassle of dealing with managing revenue from an advert stream, since most of your savvy wifi users are going to bypass the adverts anyway, and as more and more free wifi hotspots proliferate, your going to be pulled into the lowest common denominator.
Your company probably sticks it to the business owner for a couple grand to put in an avert-driven wifi spot, that produces revenue of maybe $25 a month to the business owner. So what's that business owner going to do when his next door neighbor puts in a $50 linksys and opens it up free to all, with NO adverts, and the users in his store simply select his next door neighbors SID that lacks the nuisance adverts? Why would the advertisers continue paying for their adverts on a wireless system that's overlapped by another wireless system that has no adverts?
They won't, that's what, and that's why the era of advertising-supported, and pay-as-you-go wifi is dying.
As an ISP worker I jump for joy every time another free wifi hotspot goes in, because that hotspot has got to be fed by one of my circuits, and once that business owner has customers coming into his store just to use his free wifi, he's never going to ever be able to disconnect that circuit to me again, no matter what I price it at. (within reason, of course)
Free wifi is one of the things that's turning the Internet from a "nice-to-have" service into a "must-have" service, and I can forsee the day that a company like MagicJack comes out with a "cell phone" that is 100% VoIP over wifi, and subscribes to one of those VoIP providers like Skype, where it has NO monthly cell fees, and unlimited calling. Sure, it won't be any good for making cell calls while your driving - but more and more states are making that illegal nowadays - and it won't work out in the boondocks where there's few wifi hotspots, but it's going to work well in the cities.
The day is here now that if a home has broadband, and a voiceline coming in, that the voiceline is considered a luxury, and the broadband is considered a necessity.
Most motels have free wifi, so that will be an interesting adventure.
It's not comprehensive. I know of places that it doesn't list, but it's a help to the traveler.