NY Times slips that SBC is Wayport's first reseller partner for Wi-Fi World: In a by-the-numbers piece questioning whether free Wi-Fi hotspots were challenging for-fee hotspots, Matt Richtel doesn't mention Wayport by name, focusing instead on T-Mobile. We've heard quite a bit of this before, but usually involving more sweeping free service, such as that offered by hotel chains (wired and Wi-Fi), or the model promoted by Austin Wireless City or NewburyOpen.net.
The writer says that Cometa went out of business because it was not providing a suitable return to investors. I disagree. Cometa stated, and several sources confirmed for me, that it was unable to raise additional funds from new investors. AT&T and IBM, cited as part of the financing, never invested serious money.
Richtel gets to the heart of it when he quotes a Wi-Fi user at a free location saying, he would consider subscribing to a Wi-Fi plan if there were a provider that offered universal access to hot spots everywhere. Bingo. I'll reiterate my Yogi Berraism: in the future, unlimited national Wi-Fi will be free and it will cost $20 per month. Either you'll pay nothing and deal with any of the potential downsides of relying on service that's based on the returns in that model, or you (or more likely, your employer) will pay a flat $20 per month for unlimited access across all U.S. networks.
But the key hidden fact in this story is in the last few paragraphs, when Richtel tips that SBC, which has hired Wayport to unwire its The UPS Store partner locations and manage them, will be Wayport's first Wi-Fi World customer, even though Wayport and Wi-Fi World aren't mentioned by name. In the Wi-Fi World model, Wayport is reselling access to McDonald's locations on a fixed rate per month.
The article says SBC will offer unlimited service for $19.95 per month, but will ultimately discount it significantly to existing customers. It's unclear whether that rate includes both SBC-managed locations and McDonald's, but it's likely that it's both.