Wake me when the story is over: Time tells old, boring story slightly inaccurately: Time Magazine paints a very dull picture of an exciting field by printing a story that, minus a few statistics, could have appeared over a year ago. After opening with a twist on the usual coffeeshop story, the Time story reads pretty close to the picture I painted in February 2001 in the New York Times. Ah, well, this is an article for folks who don't know anything about Wi-Fi.
Instead of even mentioning Intel's Centrino marketing campaign and system which could drive Wi-Fi use through simple awareness and branding. This is a European story from Time's overseas division, but it only mentions a single prices -- about 8 euros an hour -- for a single hot spot operator without mentioning, say, Telia's pricing in Sweden or any operator in the US.
It gets T-Mobile's acquisition of MobileStar's assets wrong; T-Mobile didn't buy the company or assume the debt. The writer also misstates Boingo's purpose by identifying it as a company that helps sniff and connect to networks.
Well, I kind of liked the twist at the beginning, since I'm the guy that put the hotspot into the barbershop.
One of the experiences that I've had over the past two years of having public hotspots, is that most mainstream folks, non-techies, still have no idea about wi-fi, let alone the possibility of using it in public. There will be a lot more "what is wi-fi" articles ongoing, in the mass media. Remember, there's more to the country and world than the SF-Seattle axis, where this stuff is old news. Adoption rates of public Wi-Fi in the rest of the US don't come close to what you guys in your corner of the world see.
I like the barbershop as a marketing tool because it allows me to gauge how consumers in general react to this stuff, and gives me a reality check. And what's old and boring to you, is still new and exciting to a ton of regular people. Right now in the New York City area, business travelers are the only viable market for public access Wi-Fi.