Alan Reiter's typically deep analysis of a flawed approach by a former client to add connectivity at conference and exhibition centers: Smart City Networks debuts a clueless model of pricing that they will hear screams and howls of derision about, starting with their former consultant Alan Reiter.

The company is pricing for a captive market at a rate that's probably very reasonable compared to what wired rates in convention centers cost: I've heard ridiculous stories of how many thousands of dollars per booth people pay for a few hundred Kbps of access.

Alan cites rates that are different from the service agreement listed at the site he links to: Alan shows $5 per hour, $25 per day, and $650 for seven days. The site shows $10 per hour and $50 per day. All of these are clock/calendar times: it's an hour or a day from when you sign up, not an hour or day of usage overall. There are certainly daypricing models like that but very few hour-pricing ones. (Update: Alan just confirmed with Smart City that the rates are $5 and $25; the ones on their site are incorrect.)

The cost is, of course, ridiculous, and people will rebel. I'd rather use a dial-up phone or spend $10 per day (or get a monthly account at $30 to $50) than pay $50 per day to have low-speed access all the time. This is the cell operators mistake, confusing ubiquity with utility.

It has to be calculated as speed over cost times availability as a percentage: the faster the speed the less the absolute price matters and the multiplier is availability percentage or ubiquity percentage. Thus having 64 Kbps at a very low cost 95 percent of the time could be seen as good as 1 Mbps for a somewhat higher cost 5 percent of the time. But 64 Kbps at a very high cost just in a convention center will drive rejection, not adoption.