Are we heading towards the wireless pavement, or are examples of free wireless just exceptions rather than the rule? Peter Cochrane would like to think the former, and I hope so too – but it probably comes down to how wireless is regulated. I shall be keeping an eye on services such as Fon.com and perhaps Myzones.com (which seems to have evolved since it was written about above).
QoS, reliability and support cost money – don’t they? I would love to see free pervasive wireless access, but don’t currently understand how it will be funded.
This is a genuine question rather than a statement of me thinking it is not possible as I know many people believe broad free access is inevitable so someone somewhere must have worked out the commercials, I guess(?).
I guess someone might have worked the commercials out but I know I haven’t – but then I haven’t worked out the commercials of shopping centre construction or pavement laying either! I think the Google view of the world is to provide a basic service for nothing, then to charge for highter bandwidth, support etc. I concur with this approach – I think it would drive adoption of mobile Internet services and allow whole new areas of commerciality to be explored.
Perhaps I’m just saying this because I want something for nothing, but I do know I frequent the cafes that have free wireless available, so that’s a win-win in my books!