I think there are 2 sides of the coin. Some will be profitable some will not be. What is good is that if there are more hotspots available all over the world, and they are free or nearly free to everyone.

What is not good, is that people use those technologies to make money and get too greedy. Worse still, to disallowing wifi give away because of the conflict of interests (some big telephone companies or DSL provider)

I believe in both, the benefit for the consumers and the benefit for the providers. There got to be a way to setup in such way that both parties are winners.

Edited by author 01-13-2006 06:10 AM
I dont thinks its true, when properly managed wifi is a profitable business venture.
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This will make you last long.

Not actually true, actually. Both Speakeasy and Earthlink permit this, as do a variety of other ISPs. Just a matter of shopping around. There's a competitive market for ISPs these days.

Meanwhile, I had breakfast at a new joint this morning (my local's shut for remodelling) and tried to get onto their pay-for-use WiFi net, provided by DeepBlueSky. I was prepared to put down $20 for a month's use, but the billing application required me to load a Java app that didn't work in OS X, and the customer support number couldn't set up billing for me by phone.
I really believe that a lot of the problem with hotspot businesses is that it's just too hard to give them your money.

Johann made my point. With $50/month DSL you're going to be in violation of your ISP's terms-of-service if you give that bandwidth away.

You need to consider that resellable bandwidth costs nothing like $50 a month. I have no idea how much more, but would imagine you're easily in the triple digits.

However, I don't see what the other costs are. By accepting a certain lossage and selling only day passes, and by only implementing security by nightly essid / message-key changes, you don't even need any billing machinery: simply sell the daily combination on a slip of paper at the cashier.

I think that alot of these schemes are like the RIAA: by being too worried about being ripped off, they lose all their customers.

I split my time between the US and Europe. Both sides are in trouble. In the US, it costs $3 a day to give away Wi-Fi (equipment depreciation and DSL) and ten times that to charge for it. In Europe, add VAT, and you have the numbers over here. The temptation for (and ability of) a retail business to give it away for more traffic is too high. On an average of one or two extra purchasers a day and free Wi-Fi is profitable.

I agree, the European hotspots are in big trouble, and that's directly related to the costs of connecting up a DSL line, and the fact that less people in Europe carry around a laptop, AFAICS.

High-cost DSL means prices go up; then with less people using them, the price per user goes up. pricing is king. See Andrew Odlyzko's research.

Speakeasy just announced a service that lets you set up and charge for hotspots off your Speakeasy DSL line. They handle the billing and provide e-mail servers and other services for your users, and split the profits with you 50-50. Compared to most DSL plans that don't let you resell at all, that seems eminently reasonable, and a good way to get your neighbors to help you pay for your DSL. ;)

More info here: http://www.speakeasy.net/netshare/admin/