Receive new posts as email.
RSS 0.91 | RSS 2.0
RDF | Atom
Podcast only feed (RSS 2.0 format)
Get an RSS reader
Get a Podcast receiver
| Sun | Mon | Tues | Wed | Thurs | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | |
| 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 |
| 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
| 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 |
| 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
This site operates as an independent editorial operation. Advertising, sponsorships, and other non-editorial materials represent the opinions and messages of their respective origins, and not of the site operator or JiWire, Inc.
Entire site and all contents except otherwise noted © Copyright 2001-2006 by Glenn Fleishman. Some images ©2006 Jupiterimages Corporation. All rights reserved. Please contact us for reprint rights. Linking is, of course, free and encouraged.
Powered by
Movable Type
« Google Displays Mountain View Wi-Fi Map | Main | MetroFi Partners with AT&T on Riverside, Calif., Bid »
This has received wide play for some reason: The city council gave their official okay for the estimated $10m contract, the cost of which will be borne entirely by MetroFi. That firm said that they will start construction of the network immediately, building it over a period of two years. One losing bidder, VeriLAN, expresses skepticism over the free, ad-supported service model. And Personal Telco’s head expect interference to be worse than advertised. The service is 1 Mbps down and 256 Kbps for free with a required ad banner at all times. A $20/month subscription removes the ad banner. Higher speeds should be available for some higher cost, although that wasn’t discussed in this article.
One issue about ad-supported networks that hasn’t been widely discussed is that the revenue model usually looks at substituting full-time, heavy monthly users who would otherwise pay $20 retail to a firm like EarthLink, MobilePro, or MetroFi getting service for free. But this ignores what will likely be a very large audience of occasional users who wouldn’t pay the day rate for the service, and who might not like what is typically a ratcheted down free service in cities that also have for-fee services—they’re usually slower, time limited, or have other restrictions.
Thus there’s a residual additive ad revenue stream by capturing eyeballs from visitors, suburban residents who come in occasional, or those who have a high-speed connection at home and are only mobile at times. That may be part of the secret of cracking ad-supported free service, if that nut is profitable enough to crack in the long run.
Posted by Glennf at July 20, 2006 12:57 PM
Categories: Metro-Scale Networks
TrackBack URL for this entry:
https://db.isbn.nu/mt3/mt-tb.pl/3873
Keep in mind that Portland's city government wants to use the network in a substantial manner itself (why they got bids for it's installation) and that reduces how much the "public" aspect needs to raise in revenue for MetroFi.
Posted by: Mike at July 21, 2006 10:03 AM
Interference will be a constant challenge and will affect bandwidth. We've seen this with the Seattle WiFi project.
In addition, users will want to access the service from inside of a business or residence (don't think indoor coverage was mentioned).
I hope the ad supported idea works for them but in a metro area there will be plenty of other locations that offer free WiFi without the banner and at much faster speeds.
Greg
Posted by: Greg Skinner at July 20, 2006 11:55 PM