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Cablevision will offer free Wi-Fi to its customers across a swath of New York: The company will spend an astounding $350m over two years—roughly $100 per customer—to put in service that they peg at offering 1.5 Mbps downstream rates. Broadband subscribers to their Optimum Online broadband service, which has rates of 15/2 and 30/5 Mbps. Others will pay for access. The company has 3.1m cable customers in New York.
This is the first large-scale Wi-Fi network announced that had no public/private component to it. While Verizon once said they’d blanket New York City with payphone-based Wi-Fi nodes, that never materialized, and it was unclear how seamless the coverage would ever be. This is a full-blown metro-scale network that’s not beholden to any political interest, and which can likely use mounting rights already available to Cablevision. (In the past, I’ve said this, and folks have said that franchising agreements would exclude additional mounted equipment of this kind. Years later, I have to say I’ve never found anything to support that opinion, but welcome more documented information in the comments.)
The idea is for Wi-Fi to act as a mobile broadband component for Cablevision, to dilute the impact of the Sprint/Clearwire deal announced yesterday. While cable companies rarely compete in a given territory, the Sprint/Clearwire joint venture will make it easier for a customer to get home and mobile broadband and voice from one company, and then turn to another firm for video. This buys Cablevision a quadruple play (voice, video, data, mobile broadband) with a future quintuple play by adding (as they say they will) voice over Wi-Fi service.
Sources indicate that BelAir equipment will be used, which makes sense given BelAir’s release nearly three years ago of a cable-plant compatible Wi-Fi node designed essentially for precisely this contingency. This is a nice win for BelAir, which will likely be selling somewhere north of 15,000 nodes based on the coverage area and service described. BelAir gear also powers Minneapolis, the only successfully completed big-city Wi-Fi network in North America.
Posted by Glennf at 1:21 PM | Comments (1)
It’s on, it’s off, it’s on again: Access to AT&T hotspots is back on again, at least in the fine print, as the company now includes the statement that all iPhone plans in the U.S. include “access to AT&T’s more than 17,000 Wi-Fi hotspots, including Starbucks.” (Click the Plans tab at top to see that text.)
AT&T appeared to have flipped a switch several days ago on its “attwifi” SSID that has appeared alongside T-Mobile’s during this several-month transition at Starbucks from one operator to another. iPhone users were presented with a custom login screen that prompted them for their phone number to obtain free access. That gateway page disappeared a few days. I haven’t tested if it’s back, but at least AT&T has, at long last, made the connection that its iPhone customers might enjoy the same free access to hotspots as its 7m fiber and qualifying DSL customers.
Update: And….that information is now gone, Computerworld reports. It’ll be back.
Posted by Glennf at 9:39 AM | Comments (0)
It’s not confirmed by the telecom giant, but several people have been able to replicate it: If you own an iPhone, you can log in at an AT&T hotspot or a Starbucks through their AT&T portal link (upper right corner of the T-Mobile screen, and soon to be a unique SSID), enter your phone number, and have free access. This is nifty, and not unexpected. AT&T is providing free service to 7 million DSL and fiber customers and 5 million remote business access customers. Adding a couple million iPhone users as an additional tie for continued loyalty is a no brainer.
Stories with pictures at MacRumors and Ars Technica. I’ll test this out with my neighborhood Starbucks tomorrow. [Link via Fabio Zambelli]
Update: Well, that didn’t last. It was clearly a test, only a test, and AT&T has pulled the plug for the moment. I suspected that with no announcements, and a national network, they might simply have flipped a switch not understanding how rabid we are all.
Posted by Glennf at 8:46 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
AT&T expands a previous free offer to premium DSL subscribers to almost all DSL subscribers: That’s right: 10m AT&T DSL subscribers now qualify for free Wi-Fi at the 9,000 McDonald’s and 1,000 other locations in AT&T’s network (operated or resold by Wayport). Anyone with 1.5 Mbps DSL or greater, which is pretty much all of its subscribers, can sign up for free Wi-Fi at the AT&T Web site.
This is another big win for Wayport, which has a few deals already for free access to its McDonald’s locations: Nintendo for its DS2 player and Zipit for the Zipit Wireless Messenger 2. I’ve long thought it odd that AT&T was willing to charge even a nominal amount to its DSL subscribers for them to use Wi-Fi, because that set a bar that would keep people from using it. Because AT&T is clearly using Wi-Fi as a customer retention tool, not a real line of revenue, the $2 per month charge seemed a little silly—both too low and too high.
I’m not sure if this puts any pressure on other locations or operators, because the kind of AT&T customer who would find this free access appealing is likely not paying for Wi-Fi elsewhere. And while McDonald’s are convenient, it’s not quite the same thing as, say, the mix of networks in Boingo’s aggregated network or the comfort of Starbucks in T-Mobile’s network.
Of course, McDonald’s is putting in coffee bars in its stores, and perhaps this is part of a strategy that involves the fast-food giant to get more customers that frequent Starbucks, thus increasing the average meal price. But McDonald’s would need to put cushy chairs and sofas in meet the coffee retailer halfway.
Posted by Glennf at 6:18 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
JiWire and its ad network will provide free access for Apple iPhone and iPod touch users to select hotspots, including airports and hotels: The program requires that you view an ad to connect for free. It’s a very interesting idea, because getting on to a Wi-Fi hotspot, despite the full-featured browser in both mobile devices, is somewhat frustrating even for free networks that require a log in. JiWire’s program not only offers free service, but bypasses hassle, too. JiWire expects to expand the program over time, but it currently includes most major airports.
Apple makes its big yearly announcements today at the Macworld Expo, which I’m attending. One of the near-term developments—perhaps showcased today—is the addition of third-party software development on the iPhone and iPod touch. I’ve been hoping for a Wi-Fi connection manager, a la Devicescape (which has a client that works on mildly hacked iPhones). The JiWire deal could obviate my need for a client, as I’ll look at an ad to get free service.
(Disclosure: I own a very small number of shares in JiWire for work performed in its early years.)
Posted by Glennf at 6:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Meraki Networks raises $20m in additional funds, spends a small portion on providing free Wi-Fi across San Francisco: Meraki, founded by MIT students, funded by Google, Sequoia Capital, and others, will expand its current 2 sq mi mesh Wi-Fi network in San Francisco across the whole city. Meraki will foot the backhaul bill and pay for equipment—but it won’t pay for real estate. The city will help publicize the network, but I haven’t read anything concrete about the city’s plans. (Read good local coverage in the San Francisco Chronicle.)
The clever bit here, and how Meraki may succeed where EarthLink failed, is that the firm is relying on individuals and businesses to choose to opt in, site equipment, and take advantage of the network working better for everyone because they participate (paging Ayn Rand). Meraki plans to offer solar-powered outdoor nodes for extending the network’s reach, which means potential locations don’t have to provide electricity on rooftops or elsewhere, which in turn means fewer or no layers of approval from anyone in authority (whether a neighborhood association, landlord, or the city). “It’s relatively easy to install on private rooftops,” said Meraki CEO and co-founder Sanjit Biswas in a briefing earlier today.
In the process, Meraki gets a city-wide testbed for local search, local ads, and new technology. “The great thing about having a real-world testbed is you can see the performance,” Biswas said. Meraki is testing advertising now, but Biswas says it’s “very much in the test mode.”
While Biswas didn’t disclose any of the costs of building the city-wide San Francisco network or its recurring bandwidth bill for backhaul—he told the AP “a few million”—the math works for Meraki. Giving away 10,000 to 15,000 nodes that cost them as little as $25 assembled for indoor nodes and a few hundred for outdoor nodes with solar chargers and batteries doesn’t add up to a lot. They don’t have to negotiate pole rates, handle installation, or pay recurring venue fees. Bandwidth is relatively cheap if you can choose the points at which you inject it, which Meraki will be able to do. Update: I misunderstood the backbone part. Meraki will, in fact, install some hundreds of solar-powered outdoor nodes to run the backhaul; but they’ll still be working with people to find those locations rather than securing those rooftops themselves.
Meraki has learned quite a lot about the real world, Biswas said, with their current San Francisco network, having identified 20,000 interferers—other devices within range and frequency of Meraki nodes—within the 2 sq mi area. Meraki nodes use a centralized intelligence to control routing, as well as a modification to Wi-Fi that doesn’t affect end users’ ability to connect, but does allow clusters of routers to act dynamically as a unit.
With unmodified mesh Wi-Fi networks, all devices within range of one another and on the same channel act in concert, reducing flexibility and throughput; smaller clusters produce better results. Further, most of the metro-scale Wi-Fi devices sold by Tropos and others are designed to put out the highest possible power output; Meraki uses generally low-power equipment. It’s ants versus elephants, with ants being able to change course a bit more quickly. “It’s kind of a brains over brawns approach. It’s really because we have so many radios,” said Biswas, that their network is more flexible. “We can set routes and load balance appropriately to get the maximum performance out of the network,” Biswas said.
The current San Francisco network has seen 40,000 unique devices so far—there’s no registration, so each unique adapter number is counted—and moved over 10 terabytes of data. Of those 40,000 devices, 1,000 were iPhones.
Biswas said that Meraki has discovered its biggest market may be developing countries where there’s an established user base for the Internet that’s limited to dial up or slow-speed broadband, and where carriers could deploy Meraki gear to get around non-existent copper infrastructure.
“A lot of our largest customers are carriers that are entering markets in Brazil and India,” he said. “We’re not at this point going after the most remote villages in the world; there are some very dense populations who…would love to use broadband but just can’t get it.”
Posted by Glennf at 9:00 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
One of the first places you could obtain Wi-Fi access in airports was in American Airlines’s Admirals Club; now, it’s free: The airline is still working with T-Mobile, but is providing this amenity at no cost to members of its Admirals [sic] Club and one-day pass guests. The frequent flyer membership number (for club members) or a unique PIN (for day pass guests) gets you in. Given that T-Mobile charges $20 to $40 per month for its HotSpot subscription or $10 for a day, the $300 to $450 annual club membership cost doesn’t sound like a bad price if you don’t otherwise need T-Mobile service or rely on other offerings.
It’s a neat amenity, matched only by Continental, which had that nasty long-running battle at the FCC with Boston-Logan over their free service. Continental won.
Posted by Glennf at 10:55 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Thirteen airports are covered in a free Wi-Fi for iPhones promotion: Boingo Wireless is reaching out to the hundreds of thousands of we early adopters with iPhones by offering free access in 13 airports. They purchased Concourse Communications last year, the leading airport Wi-Fi vendor. Boingo charges $8 for a day session or $22 for unlimited US and $39 for unlimited worldwide access. No special coupon codes are needed: Just select the “concourse” network from the list of Wi-Fi networks and connect.
Because the iPhone doesn’t yet support third-party applications, using Boingo requires the entry of your user name and password on a login page each time you want to connect. This promotion should let iPhone owners test Boingo’s network with less friction; ultimately, Apple will allow outside software, and a Boingo connection manager would be the first thing I’d want on mine.
The airports are Baltimore/Washington, Detroit, JFK, Kalamazoo/Battle Creek, LaGuardia, Lambert-St. Louis, Midway (Chicago), Minneapolis-St. Paul, Nashville, Newark, O’Hare, Toronto, and Will Rogers (Oklahoma City).
(An enterprising soul might recognize that the iPhone is recognized by an HTTP referrer string sent by its Safari browser.)
Posted by Glennf at 7:04 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
We all know that European Wi-Fi access is overpriced: Articles appear practically every week from some commentator—either a traveler into Europe or a bona fide European—rails against hotel and hotspot Internet pricing. Free-Hotspot.com thus has scored a minor coup in building a network of over 600 locations in 14 countries that are free, free, free. They say 40,000 people use the network each month. The group supports free service via advertising. The company says that free hotspots overall doubled in Europe in 2006, but given that they claim 60% of that growth, that means there are no more than 1,000 locations that they’re aware of that don’t charge a fee for access. In the US, that number is as high as 10,000 across a similar population.
Posted by Glennf at 1:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Reader notes that AT&T has a simple giveway for using their network at no cost until Dec. 31: Klaus Ernst, a handheld Wi-Fi device aficionado, writes in to note that he spotted a link to get free access to the AT&T FreedomLink network over at JiWire’s hotspot directory. Search on any AT&T FreedomLink location—that’s the 4,000 UPS Stores, Barnes and Noble outlets, and other hotspots in their self-contracted network—and you’ll get a link to a coupon. The coupon is good until the end of the year, and apparently allows unlimited use. (This excludes McDonald’s locations, which are available to AT&T FreedomLink subscribers, but which are operated by Wayport under a separate agreement.)
(Disclaimer: I have a long-term relationship with JiWire on editorial and testing matters, and a small stock ownership in the firm.)
Posted by Glennf at 2:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Free Wi-Fi in Hong Kong’s Chek Lap Kok airport: The Internet provider PCCW launched service three years ago with fees attached, and only offered access in limited locations. The service in Hong Kong will now be throughout all terminals and areas, and be available at no cost. Service used to substantially more than their comparable service in the city. The company doesn’t discuss what it gets out of going free in the article, but it’s clear that it’s a great promotion for them to have many more users seeing their name, and then buying other services from them—including more moderately priced Wi-Fi (HK$18 or US$2.30 per hour) at locations throughout Hong Kong.
Posted by Glennf at 3:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Google exec frustrated at San Francisco contract negotiation tactics, delays: The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Chris Sacca, Google’s lead in its partnership with Google to put Wi-Fi in that city, is frustrated with the delays that the city has introduced into producing a final contract. The article couldn’t get comments from EarthLink or the city, and speculates that Sacca’s statements are a negotiation tactic. The article also notes that contact progress is posted.
Sacca contrasts the Mountain View process (2 1/2 months) with the several months so far without the end in sight. He should have studied Philadelphia, where EarthLink was awarded the bid in Oct. 2005, had a contract finished in early 2006, and didn’t receive city council approval and then signed contracts until about May. The summer involved permitting and other work, and the pilot network is only now under construction.
Also, Mountain View was getting a big, fat, free gift. EarthLink will charge for access at a higher rate in SF, while Google will offer lower speeds for free.
Posted by Glennf at 8:13 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
The airport authority will offer no-cost Wi-Fi in the food court (news not yet online): The rest of the airport remains a for-fee operation at $7.95 per day, operated by AT&T (formerly under AT&T Wireless, before the Cingular acquisition). The head of aviation for the city gave away the goods when he noted that connections are now 10,000 per month, double that of a year ago. A maximum of $80,000 per month in revenue for a system that surely cost millions to build and probably tens of thousands to operate each month is fairly paltry. And revenue is probably far below $80K because of roaming, in which AT&T will see quite a bit below $7.95.
Free makes sense in this equation because reducing the cost of collections and marketing reduces overall recurring operating expenses by a large factor. Increasing passenger satisfaction brings in more travelers who would then choose air over rail or car because they could get work done while waiting for flights. An addition passenger brings in several dollars (or more) of fees for the airport where their share of Wi-Fi revenue is probably substantially lower. Placing free service in the food court also increases revenue for concessionaires, which in turn produces more tax and franchise revenue for the airport.
(On a math-related front, the city’s aviation chief said usage was “growing exponentially,” but doubling in a year is an arithmetic progression by most definitions of both words unless it doubles again this year or doubled from the year before last.)
Posted by Glennf at 9:39 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Caribou Coffee gains freedom from FreedomLink: The firm, which at this writing still lists its AT&T FreedomLink affiliation, will offer one hour free to customers. After the first hour, a purchase of $1.50 or more is needed for each additional hour. This is a very interesting model that I’ve seen at some independent coffeehouses, but not that I can recall in a chain.
This is also the third national chain going free or quasi-free: Tully’s cut the fee cord a few weeks ago, and Cosi went free on July 1. Neither Cosi nor Tully’s requires purchases.
Wandering WiFi will operate the service for Caribou, which will launch Wi-Fi at some undisclosed number of its over 400 stores in 16 states. The press release says “participating locations” will have Wi-Fi by next month.
Posted by Glennf at 12:59 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
The network goes live Wednesday morning: Google’s gift to its headquarters city is now labeled the largest purely free Wi-Fi network in the U.S. This qualification is necessary because there are larger cities, including some other Bay Area cities, that have advertising-supported free networks (such as MetroFi’s) or limited free usage each day. St. Cloud used to be the largest free, non-commercial network, but they have a third the residents. The network was delayed a couple of months from an earlier launch plan to increase density to fill in niches.
Google deployed 380 Tropos nodes and says they spent $1m. The network isn’t intended to provide robust indoor coverage, and isn’t optimized in my view of their plan for bridges, although Mountain View’s general architecture should allow bridged connections pretty easily.
The New York Times focuses on Google not building networks beyond Mountain View and San Francisco, the latter of which EarthLink has said that Google will be a key tenant on a for-fee network that EarthLink will construct. I have said dozens of times since the idea first floated of nationwide Google-Fi that metro-scale Wi-Fi is a low-margin business; applications that run on networks are much higher. Why would Google sink capital into a network that others could build and they could leverage?
Posted by Glennf at 9:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
One of many Seattle-based coffee chains switches to free Wi-Fi: The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that Tully’s will turn 79 stores from fee to free on August 7. Tully’s has quite a history with Wi-Fi. They signed up with Cometa a few months before that firm went under, and days away from shutting down their Wi-Fi network, they partnered with NetNearU. That back-end enabling firm didn’t operate any locations, and had to reassure their partners that they weren’t becoming a hotspot operator.
NetNearU will continue to operate the service, with Tully’s paying an undisclosed fee. In many cases, hotspot operators charge $50 per month for managed service with significant discounts for multiple locations. Customer service and technical support calls made by the stores or by the store’s customers can be charged on a per-incident basis or on a metered basis to the operator. Service currently costs $3.95 per day or $19.95 per month.
I have heard increasingly frequently in recent months from various parts of the industry (venue, operator, and other) that the cost of charging people for service when it’s a relatively nominal amount is often completely outweighed by the cost of billing and the high expectations rendered against the service. There’s also a loss of customer when the customer has to choose between free and fee, or among fee-based locations, whether hotel, coffeeshop, or even airport. (Regional airports have started using free Wi-Fi as bait.) With direct revenue not top of mind, it’s easier to pay a flat rate and allow customers unlimited usage rather than receive a small trickle of income and have customers have to think about it. It’s friction.
Tully’s will provide free Wi-Fi in 79 stores in California, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. They have a handful in Arizona that are apparently not currently offering Wi-Fi nor will do so in the near term. In the Fremont neighborhood around my office in Seattle, we have several independent and chain coffee shops, from an almost literal hole in the wall to a couple fairly giant indies. T-Mobile is about three doors down from Tully’s on the main drag (Fremont Ave N.), with a conveyor-belt sushi joint between them.
Posted by Glennf at 10:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Does this mean 1 Mbps downstream for free is unsustainable? News.com reports that MetroFi, one of the three leading U.S. metro-scale Wi-Fi operators, has partnered with AT&T for a bid on the 65-square-mile Riverside, Calif., network. In what might be a footnote or might be a significant development, this bid offers only 512 Kbps downstream at no cost, unlike all of MetroFi’s other bids and operations, which offer 1 Mbps downstream. That rate is available from AT&T at $20 per month, News.com reports. (Upstream rates are a mere 256 Kbps in both cases, unlike most of the paid services in which 1 Mbps symmetrical is offered.)
News.com quotes MetroFi’s head as noting that they need the “brand recognition and the financial resources of a larger company like AT&T, which we could use to market the service.” This makes little sense to me—if you win a contract as what is essentially the exclusive Wi-Fi operator for an entire city, along with which comes in some cases various advertising rights, a citywide network signal that anyone with a laptop or handheld can see, and the local press coverage that these networks are garnering—why is marketing an issue? Further, Haas told me months ago that eliminating marketing expense was one of the reasons to go free, as it reduced costs.
Posted by Glennf at 7:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
BSkyB is latest to offer free broadband in the home: Free needs an asterisk, as the Sky Broadband service requires a subscription to the satellite television service (about £17/$31 per month), a £40 ($73.50) activation fee, and may involve some installation fees. The service is ADSL with 2 Mbps downstream, and will include a free wireless router. A 16 Mbps downstream service is just £10 ($18) per month. And a landline VoIP-like service will add £5 ($9) per month for unlimited calls to landline numbers in the UK. BSkyB will put £400m ($735m) into its broadband service over the next three years, expecting profitability in 2010. (A reader notes that this isn’t VoIP per se: It’s Carrier Pre Select (CPS), in which wireline calls are terminated via Sky’s network. This is similar, I believe, to US providers like Speakeasy which use VoIP as a carrying mechanism over the local loop.)
BSkyB isn’t alone, which sounds odd to those of us outside the UK. Television service and mobile phone offerings are in such a high state of competition, that broadband-included packages are not unusual. Carphone Warehouse offers 8 Mbps ADSL with a £20 ($38) per month unlimited UK landline voice package (that’s the £11 line fee plus their service), a £30 ($54) activation fee, and an 18-month contract. An extra £1 per month gets you unlimited landline calling in 28 countries. (The British advertising watchdog ruled that Carphone can’t call this service “free” because the broadband service is integral to the voice offering, but Carphone has finessed this and can advertise free by adding the broadband to previous calling plans at no charge.)
Orange offers the same 8Mbps speed with a £30/$55-per-month, 18-month contract, and has no activation fee.
Posted by Glennf at 10:56 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
A three-day-a-week paper in North Carolina decides to serve its community with Wi-Fi, too: The Pilot will add free Internet access starting in Southern Pines, where it’s based. The paper will put a Wi-Fi node on its roof and then expand from there into town squares. The paper has an extensive Web presence, with blogs, podcasts, and multimedia, so it seems like a natural extension for them. Their site receives 5,000 unique visitors a day. Later, they’ll add a wireless broadband network that will charge a fee.
The man behind this is Eric “Zonker” Harris, which makes me imagine him as his sobriquet’s inspiration from Doonesbury, with a pointed Van Dyke beard scurrying around rooftops. Hey, Zonker! Be careful on rooftops, or this could happen to you.
Posted by Glennf at 4:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
A Vancouver, Wash., coffeeshop finally called the cops: This is a frightening trend (of one story) where a cafe was pushed to the brink. As KATU in Portland reports, a 20-year-old man spent three months using Brewed Awakenings’s free Wi-Fi service from their parking lot for hours at a time. It doesn’t say that the staff asked him to stop; rather it says, “deputies told [the guy] to knock it off.” Police charged him with theft of services when he returned. It’s unclear whether that charge will stick. I’d think trespassing (the parking lot is likely private) or harassment is more likely. Oh, and the guy is a Level One Sex Offender, which makes the story prurient.
This is a tricky one because the cafe certainly could have chosen to take measures that would have either required a purchase or required someone to enter the store at the very least and get a code. They didn’t, so this guy ruined their idyllic situation.
As I wrote about more than a year ago when I covered a few scattered cafes and restaurants that turn off Wi-Fi at different points of the day or week, freeloaders can ruin it for everyone else, and it’s particularly galling to owners of small establishments trying to make a living. [link via TechDirt]
Posted by Glennf at 7:02 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
The Wall Street Journal writes about cities new demands for wireless networks—free! The peg on this story is Sacramento’s late-in-negotiations request for better free access from MobilePro, the winner of the bid for that city’s service. MobilePro estimated that it could only make $2 per customer using advertising versus the $20 or more from subscriber fees. Of course, the $2 rate might be gross ad receipts while $20 doesn’t back out bill presentment, marketing, and other expenses.
The key difference between MetroFi, which has an ad-supported free, full-speed service, and an ad-free paid option, and MobilePro is how they conceive of their potential customer base. MetroFi looks at sweeping a wider net using the same fixed-cost infrastructure. Thus, getting 10 times the customers and grossing $2 apiece while eliminating all the paid-service and marketing overhead seems like a good deal to MetroFi. To MobilePro, it’s lost revenue.
This is a fascinating evolution that’s happened in about 18 months from cries of “a waste of taxpayer dollars” for service that would benefit just a few, to risk outsourcing with vendors handling all the money in exchange for being able to charge for services and get a city’s telecom/data business, to “gimme gimme gimme.” We’ll see what model is most stable.
EarthLink’s leadership has been widely quoted stating they don’t believe that advertising-supported service is viable as a main line of business. EarthLink, MobilePro, and MetroFi are the three biggest metro-scale providers, so we’ll see in probably fairly quick order which outlook is correct. MetroFi needs a lot of money to build out their newly acquired cities, and the market will supply that money if they think there’s a revenue pipe to return it.
MobilePro apparently provided a wide array of interesting numbers to the reporter, including that they grossed $46m last year, although they run a large variety of telecom-related businesses outside of metro-scale Wi-Fi. They’re publicly traded, so you can examine a wide variety of statistics about the firm, and reports filed with the SEC. Yahoo Finance’s current Key Statistics chart shows nearly $100m in revenue as of March 31, 2006, the end of their fiscal year.
Posted by Glennf at 9:38 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Company issues press release about rug being pulled: MobilePro uses Strix gear to build privately operated metro-scale networks that provide some services to cities—typically mobile workers—with a larger focus on mobile and fixed access for consumers, businesspeople, homes, and businesses. They put out a press release that they’ve withdrawn from the Sacramento, Calif., project because the city changed its terms. MobilePro says Sacramento now wanted to require them to build a high-speed, free, advertising-supported network contrary to MobilePro’s business model and original response to the RFP.
The Sacramento Bee has a reaction from local officials: The city’s CTO says he was surprised that MobilePro went public instead of further negotiating. Stephen Ferguson says in this article that the city council directed him to work on a deal closer to those in San Francisco (300 Kbps free via a Google partnership with network builder EarthLink) and Portland, Ore. (free ad-supported access with a fee-based no-ad option).
Ferguson says in this story that they’ll have to go back to the drawing board, but that their pilot project with MobilePro will aid them in finding a replacement faster. According to earlier news accounts, AT&T (then SBC), Motorola, and MobilePro submitted bids, with AT&T withdrawing at one point. I imagine that Sacramento could get as many as a dozen bids on this go-round.
Update: I talked to Stephen Ferguson, the city’s CTO and Jim Rinehart, the head of the economic development department for Sacramento, about this development. Both Ferguson and Rinehart said that the evolving nature of metro-scale wireless networks in other cities affected the city council’s requirements for this network. Because other cities were able to find providers that could meet the city council’s targets, this meant that MobilePro was asked for comparable services. “The council’s feeling was if we’re going to sign a contract with a provider, we want it to be comparable with what we’re seeing in other locations like Portland, San Francisco, and Philadelphia,” Ferguson said.
“We wanted to give MobilePro every opportunity to the city’s issues. They were repsonding in good faith,” Ferguson said. “We just got to the point where they couldn’t close it, they couldn’t make it worth, according to their own internal business model.” The city wanted advertising-supported free access to be a part of the mix, they said.
Ferguson and Rineheart noted that with so many changes in technology and in the economics of these networks, they would rework the RFP to incorporate newer ideas, such as including tests of more cutting-edge technology, like mobile WiMax, as part of the mix, although the core end-user access will still have to remain Wi-Fi. The RFP will be reissued within four to six weeks with a 30-day deadline for responses.
Ferguson noted that municipal CTOs and CIOs talk to each other all the time, and that Philadelphia’s technology head, Dianah Neff, is someone he’s known for 20 years. Sacramento sent their own RFP to five other cities to use as a model. “We know more about them [vendors] than they know about themselves,” since cities aren’t competing on technology and they have broad public disclosure.
This development in Sacramento may put more pressure on firms entering the metro-scale market because city’s may increasingly ask for escalation. Some cities already state in contracts that they will get at least a good a deal from the company that’s building the wireless network as that company will offer elsewhere. But since it’s a partnership, one expects cities not to push too hard—or the firms they contract with will, like MobilePro, decline to proceed.
Posted by Glennf at 7:48 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
AnchorFree ups the ante on secure hotspot use: The free Wi-Fi advocating network reduces the cost of virtual private network (VPN) access from a few dollars a month to free. AnchorFree has built its own free hotspots in the Bay Area, acquired MetroFreeFi.com, and is building an affiliate network of free locations that meet its technical standards in exchange for some group resources and branding. Do you see the trend for free?
Over the last two years, I’ve written extensively about VPN use in hotspots and reviewed a number of services like personalVPN (WiTopia.net), publicVPN.com, and HotSpotVPN.com. I’ve also written about my editorially affiliated partner JiWire and their SpotLock service, which combines a hotspot directory, how-to guides, and a VPN.
AnchorFree, which just received $6m in private funding, may tap into a very broad audience of Windows 2000/XP laptop toters who just want the security without paying for it, even modest amounts. Regular readers will recall that Google launched a free, fairly limited VPN test (it used PPTP, which I would describe as last century’s technology, although with the right long password, it’s plenty secure). While the FAQ is still available, Google’s VPN page is missing in action. I’ll be surprised if we don’t see Google VPN return for metro-scale Wi-Fi market, however; it originally appeared at wifi.google.com as part of their testing with free Wi-Fi in San Francisco. (Search on Google VPN on Google and you get a page that redirects to their home page.)
I asked AnchorFree what flavor of VPN they’re using, and it’s SSL (read a 2005 article at InfoWorld or this TidBITS article on VPNs in general for background). This form doesn’t require a reboot, and it’s controlled via a local Web page once it’s installed. I did some brief testing and found performance and security just fine, although I’d like to see some security types really pound on it (and report problems to AnchorFree before publicizing them), to run it through its paces.
My absolute recommendation for all public hotspot users, as much or as little as you care about your security, is to use a VPN or secure any connection that uses a password with SSH or SSL/TLS.
With a free solution available, you owe it to yourself to try it out. If it’s not flexible enough, tell AnchorFree why (they might improve it), or migrate to a few dollar a month service. Mac users, Linux users, and other Windows platforms still need to pay, but given the wide availability of SSL VPN clients out there, I would imagine AnchorFree has further plans.
Posted by Glennf at 1:59 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
More free airport Wi-Fi is cropping up: It’s hardly a trend, but it’s definitely good for travelers. Virgin Blue, a discount carrier, relaun