Public Wi-Fi in a Death Spiral

From the FurryGoat: I do agree with the basic fact that I’m not going to go to McDonald’s specify to find a hotspot, but don’t try to sell me that GRPS will beat it out – it’s just to damn slow. It’s not about where the connection is located, but rather the convenience of connectivity. That’s not the half of it, m’boy!

Steve’s note actually started with an article at InfoWorld via Hack In The Box. I guess that makes this a retort thrice removed or something. Usually I would have just left a comment on the ‘Goat but this was something that I’ve had a lot of experience with lately and wanted a longer than normal blurb about it… it’s a stone in my shoe, or at least it used to be.

Wait, you didn’t know I had experience with Wi-Fi? Actually, I haven’t. Oh, I have a 802.11b AP in my house as well as in my sister’s house and my parent’s house. Why? Because wireless PC’s are an infectious thing. All this time, PC makers have been working their asses off to get PC’s into the home, yet what they needed wasn’t a faster or large screened media PC… they needed a notebook with a Wi-Fi connection to the Internet. For some reason when these three non-Geeks have seen me with an online notebook they became instantly jealous. When they’ve tried it for themselves, they asked me to set up an Access Point (AP) in their respective houses.

Look at that, though, right there: non-Geeks wanting to use a PC! That’s a breakthrough. And here comes the problem, though. Some marketing yutz’s got together at some point and said “Hey, we need Wi-Fi AP everywhere!” T-Mobile saw it first and flung a public AP in a number of airports. This was actually a pretty good idea because there’s a high concentration of a) business travelers and b) notebooks and both have a tendency to spend a lot of time in most terminals. They are charged by the hour or by the month for this service but because of the types of people in airports – and the fact that most of them have expense accounts – this wasn’t a deterrent so the service has done well there.

Next T-Mo threw a similar AP setup in most of the US Starbucks locations. When you sell coffee at $3.50/cup and you don’t through out people for loitering, you’ll find that there’s a sizable group of people that will hang out and spend money on wireless connections. I know I’ve used it myself, when I had a day of free service, and it worked well enough.

And here’s where the problem starts.

Other companies see these trials as a bandwagon to jump on. While this might seem like a good idea for some product, this isn’t one of them. You see Wi-Fi is very much like premium cell phone services to Americans. They will use the shit outta of it, if it’s “free.” What’s “free” mean? If you offer a phone plan for $10 and tell people that call waiting and caller id and wireless web are each $3 extra, most US customers won’t buy it. But if you took the same phone plan, say that you’re including the 3 features for “free” and charge $25 for the plan – which would have been $19 under the original pricing – more Americans will buy it!

See, I spent the last 4 years trying to convince co-workers of this – and no one listened – because it’s the honest truth. Americans are very weird about paying for services they can’t “touch”. We don’t pay a per minute charge with ISP’s, we don’t pay for e-mail, we don’t like paying for software, and we hate paying for cable – to us it’s all intangible. The cell phone services that are supposed to be all the rage right now all come with a surcharge for an intangible service… the end result of this pricing plan is that these services have little to no uptake, yet everyone involved is surprised somehow.

Thankfully, these cell phone concerns are no long my concerns; I now get to watch such trials from afar and with a good deal of detachment, the same way I’ve watch public Wi-Fi trials – both issues stem from the same cause/problem. Take the coming onslaught of coming hotspot trials. What, McDonald’s? OK, here’s a little unknown fact: most fast food restaurants are scientifically color coordinated and engineered to force people to leave. Food in three minutes; ten minutes to eat; one minute to leave. Amazing the things you can learn in a high school job. Soooooo you’re going to set up a service that requires customers to hang out and stay online, yet you’ve selected a location that is geared to throw people out. Right. Nice one.

I don’t get how companies can not get it. Let’s look at some examples of successful technology and services. Why has blogging been so successful? For most people, it’s free to do, so why not? Why have ISP’s been so successful? “Free” services (email, spam filters, etc.) with unlimited usage, bundled into one subscription. Why is Caller ID so popular on cell phones, yet moderately successful on wired phones? It’s included in the base priced wireless plan and is an a la carte option on wired plans. Digital cameras? No development charges from a photo lab. For most services to succeed in America they need to be free, and that’s a fact that eludes sooooooooooo many businesses.

Again: thankfully these problems are not mine… I just get to watch them from the cheap seats in the back!


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