[LUAU] Re: [AWN] Wi-Fi traffic jam in Hawaii
Jim Thompson
jim at netgate.com
Wed Jun 1 12:36:07 PDT 2005
Aloha Nam,
Continuing the metaphor.
You suppose there are businesses who's sole function it is to service
pay toilets? Keep the rolls changed, hourly cleanings, payroll for
the attendants, that kind of thing?
Probably not. Many states (NY and CA are two) have outlawed pay
toilets.
I have no idea of your age (I'm 43.) Pay toilets used to be a
popular option in the US (I remember a few from my youth.) I remember
that there was a social custom of holding the door so the next person
could "get in free". Otherwise, the wise individual carried
several dimes. They're all but gone now, with only a few municipal
experiments that thrive.
There is a fair amount of information here:
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=511929
Wayport has its offering that is a mix of pay toilet culture and
Internet services. They call it "Laptop Lane". Its a cube farm that
you can rent by the 5 minute increment. (OOOH, just what I want, to
spend more time in my cube!) Way back in 1999, "Laptop Lane" was a
separate company, and Wayport provided the service for their new
(pair of) Cube Farms in Chicago's O'Hare airport. I installed same
(they were a high profile customer, and I wanted to test the software
that our techs would be using, but be able to fix the issues (and
database) manually if required.
I took along a pair of 802.11b APs (the Aironet 4800) and installed
one in each set of cubes. Two weeks later it snowed, and ORD got
shut down with several thousand passengers inside. The cube farms
filled, and a queue formed. Then, and only then, and a light-bulb
went off in the minds of the Laptop Lane founders. The *entire
terminal* could be a big cube farm. (For indeed, most of the
concourse was covered.)
But on that day, it was free. As was every airport that was
installed while I was still the CTO of Wayport. My little 'gift' to
those who could find a card. Man, did that every piss off
Mobilestar (now T-Mobile) and Laptop Lane (when they were still a
separate business). You could hear the outrage from a thousand
miles away. They knew they couldn't compete with free, and we put up
little coupons that you could save to use for free connectivity at
the hotel later. This got people using the service at the airport
(driving awareness), and allowed us to steer customers to Wayport
enabled hotels. We had software that tried hard to limit you to
one coupon. You could route around it if you knew what you were
doing, but for the most part, we enjoyed hearing back from the hotel
that people were picking the hotel based on the availablity of
broadband at the hotel. I had a lot of fun at Wayport, until the day
I brought in a copy of "The Cluetrain Manifesto" for every one of the
company's executives and managers. The CEO got a lot more paranoid.
He thought i was trying to take over. It must have been "Hyperlinks
subvert hierarchy" that got him. Then the VCs replaced him with a
new, stupid CEO. I tried to introduce him to "Cluetrain" and he
waved it off as a book for "people who program routers". I left 6
months later. After I left, the meter went in on Wayport's airport
WiFi.
Yyou may want to take a look at companies like Panera Bread and
Schlotzky's, both offer Free WiFi (and toilets) in their venues. And
its good for business. Further, I don't recall Starbucks charging
for cream and sugar (or bathroom use). Nor do they wander the tables
picking up the newspapers that have already been read in an effort to
drive newspaper sales in their stores.
Would these things be different in your world?
Take a look at: http://www.computerworld.com/printthis/
2003/0,4814,86149,00.html (quoting):
In fact, Shaich considers free Wi-Fi to be such an essential
marketing tool that he dismisses any discussion of ROI. "What is the
ROI on a
bathroom?" asked Shaich, pointing out that the day of pay
restrooms in restaurants has long since passed.
There are several hotel chains that offer "free WiFi" as well. Even
some airports.
In reality the public WiFi market will fragment into three parts (and
perhaps it already has):
1) Free access given away as a public good. This is the community
wireless (and now Metro WiFi) action plan.
2) Free (amenity) access to attract people to locations to engage in
transactions. Hotels, coffee shops, restaurants, etc. You
(typically)
have a choice on where to go for coffee or a burger.
3) Paid access where people engaged in transactions want Internet
access. This will only happen where the
need to be in a given location exceeds the need for access.
Examples including being at an airport in order to catch a flight
or sitting in a convention center in order to attend a conference.
These could also be thought of as being in increasing order of
captivity. People will only pay to access the Internet when they
are already engaged in a transaction tens or perhaps hundreds of
times as costly as the connectivity. You spend several hundred
dollars to catch a flight, but spending $40 at a burger joint is
outrageous, even in Hawaii.
If you're really held captive (on a cruise ship), you can be outright
robbed: http://doc.weblogs.com/discuss/msgReader$3219
Here is Doc Searls on PayFi: http://doc.weblogs.com/
2003/03/05#freeFiFoFun
Personally, I think that Honolulu C&C should light up the beaches and
public parks. I'd be prepared to lend a hand to do it, too. This
isn't so much so you can use your computer on the beach (trust me,
there are better things to do), but rather that it would enable a
whole new set of applications while on the beach, provide a public
good, and be a "Really Cool Hack" (TM).
The San Diego wireless folk are lighting up a low-income section of
that city with APs that Netgate has donated.
As for the Recipients, here is a brief directory:
Rod Tateyama: MIS guy (?) at the Halekulani.
Stewart Yerton: The author of the article
LUAU: Linux Users AnonymoUs -- essentially the linux "club" in our
state. These days its the primary mailing list for HOSEF
(Hawaii Open Source Education Foundation (www.hosef.org))
AustinWireless: the community wireless group in Austin, Texas.
Best known for lighting up several parks in Austin and more recently,
helping kill the Texas bill that would have prevented municipal
WiFi in Texas. (www.austinwireless.net) As an aside, Jon Lebkowski
and I were once in business together, but we try to not allow that to
interfere with our friendship.
Glenn Fleischman: Unsolicited pundit, freelance journalist, blogger,
book author, Sr. Editor Jiwire, Macintosh God, former Amazon employee.
www.glennf.com and "WiFi Network
News" (80211b.weblogger.com)
Doc Searls: co-author of "Cluetrain" (www.cluetrain.org), Sr. Editor
of Linux Journal, board member at several companies that I won't list
here.
Well-known blogger (main: doc.weblogs.com, "IT Garage"
http://garage.docsearls.com/, etc).
As for me, since 1988:
Sun Microsystems: (built and managed the Internal, world-
wide network, fought off people who wanted to do internal "charge back")
Tadpole: (notebook SPARC (and other) workstations. First
exposure to wireless Ethernet (1993/1994). First exposure to Linux
(1995).
http://www.byte.com/art/9506/sec9/art12.htm
http://sunsite.uakom.sk/sunworldonline/
swol-10-1995/swol-10-newproducts1.html#wk12.tadpole.P1000
(I was the guy who had to make all but WFW 3.11 and Win95 work)
Smallworks: (consultancy, where, among other things we
wrote parts of every commercial DHCP and AAA server)
Wayport: The first (with Mobilestar) "public Internet
access" company. There was (and still is) a lot of linux that
drives Wayport.
Musenki: World's first "open source" 802.11 Access Points
Vivato: Phased array 802.11 (still driven by linux)
Netgate: escape from the corporate world
During the Tadpole/Smallworks daze, I also co-owned "Fringeware" with
Jonl and others. While there, I dropped free Internet into the
Flightpath
coffee shop. This was 1995 or so. The connectivity was serial
ports (SLIP, PPP) and 10baseT Ethernet.
So its probably been a decade or so for me doing "free IP'", as well
as being part of one of the world's first (and largest) providers of
for-fee WiFi and Ethernet connectivity. I too once thought that
people would pay simply because it was there. I eventually had to
ask Wayport's board, "what are you going to do when its all free?"
Then again, I once thought that I could run two 802.11b APs in the
same box.
We all learn.
jim
p.s. you are probably aware that the "connection" between sitting on
the toilet and WiFi use is quite strong. Nearly everyone has done
both at the same time at some point. Wayport's founder once
famously snooped on the Mobilestar offices by sitting in the john of
the office building.
On Jun 1, 2005, at 7:25 AM, Nam Vu wrote:
> Aloha Jim,
>
> I apologize to any one that is gettig this and does not want it. I
> am just replying to all and really do not know the original intent
> of the recipients. Let me know and I will remove you from future
> replies.
>
> I'm sorry for mis-stating your statements. I understand now more
> clearly your stance.
>
> My original statements about free Wi-Fi were meant to demonstrate
> why I thought there would be a decline of free Wi-Fi, or at least
> the availability of usecured networks. Not that there are not the
> same problem with paid for Wi-Fi, but a WISP is willing to take
> those risks to make a profit, whereas a residential user may think
> twice about sharing his connection when problems start to become
> more common. I have driven around neighborhoods and although the
> number of AP's is definitely up, the number of secured AP's are
> also definitely up.
>
> The toilet paper analogy is a cute one. Let's carry it further:
>
> Bottom line is that someone has to pay for the toilet paper. Which
> if everyone if NOT charging for toilet paper, then obviously if I
> want to stay in business, I have to cease charging for toilet
> paper. At which point the price of the tilet paper goes into the
> cost of doing business and my pricing would have to reflect that.
>
> But if all of the businesses around me are charging for toilet
> paper, then what is a toilet user to do? Run around town looking
> for toilet paper while he really has to get on the toilet?
>
> And if there is toilet paper 1/2 mile down the road, will I trek
> down there to use the toilet each time, or just pay for the toilet
> paper in my hotel room?
>
> When and if it gets to the point that free toilet paper is readily
> available then I can see that by declining toilet paper revenues
> and I had better have a plan to migrate to free toilet paper, but
> until then what's the problem with trying to recoup costs?
>
> And you know sometimes I wish people would charge for toilet
> paper. I would gladly pay for toilet paper if it meant the
> facilities were maintained, consistently available, won't break
> while I'm on an important session or have too many people using it
> that I can't get in.
>
> We're still talking about toilet paper....right?
>
> On an aside, I was at either Heathrow or Gatwick or at the subway
> (the Tube?), and I indeed had to pay to use the toilet. At first I
> thought "What the....", but then when I saw that there was a
> constant attendant, and the facfilities were clean, it made some
> sense. I suspect it was not to generate revenues, but rather to
> help maintain the facilities and keep the riff-raff out, and I'm
> sure the revenues did not hurt.
>
> Bottom line, which has been shown time and again in the free models
> is who's going to pay for it. Have we not learned anything? We're
> not only talking about the deployment costs, which is minimal, or
> the line, which is probably already present. What about the cost
> of pulling your cashier away for 30 minutes to help a user who has
> never used his Wi-Fi equipment before and does not know how to turn
> his built in radio on and decides that your coffee shop is the luck
> one for his maiden vouyage.
>
> And what happens when more and more users like this come in because
> now the laptop they just bought has it and they just want to try?
> Has anyone fielded a first-timer's questions...? Scary.
>
> And what happens when there is a problem and you don't have anyone
> on staff that can fix it and all of your Wi-Fi customers are angry
> and demand a refund for their coffees because they expected to be
> able to use Wi-Fi. And if this happens frequently, your network
> will be labeled "flaky" and you will actually lose customers.
>
> What are the costs and who is going to pay for it?
>
> Yes, Netzero exists and they now charge for access which is my
> point to the death of free.
>
> Nam
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jim Thompson [mailto:jim at netgate.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, May 31, 2005 9:43 AM
> To: nam.vu at shaka.net
> Cc: stewart yerton; austinwireless at austinwireless.net; LUAU;
> rod.tateyama at HALEKULANI.COM; Glenn Fleischman
> Subject: Re: [AWN] Wi-Fi traffic jam in Hawaii
>
>
> On May 31, 2005, at 9:11 AM, Nam Vu wrote:
>
>> Stewart,
>> I don't think you got anything really wrong except for the
>> reference to it being a part of the FM frequency.
>> A lot of what Jim was talking about was not relevant to the
>> specific topic you wrote about which is the problem of congestion
>> and interference in Waikiki.
>> He has the view that ultimately Wi-Fi should be free. I am
>> inclined to agree with him in some aspects of that, but definitely
>> disagree with him on some aspects. Obviously, we believe and can
>> demonstrate that there is a business model in providing Wi-Fi pay-
>> for access. We also believe there are instances where free Wi-Fi
>> makes more sense and we do both. We would not be in business
>> otherwise.
>
> This is a slight misstatement of what I said, or intended to say.
> My assertion is not so much that WiFi *should* be free, but rather
> that it *will* be free. This is mostly an economic argument,
> supported by the technology (and its limitations) that drive WiFi.
>
> The first thing you have to remember is this:
>
> WiFi (only) runs in unlicensed spectrum. It is highly doubtful that
> 802.11 (WiFi) would have taken off had it been saddled with a
> requirement
> for any user (or operator) first obtaining a spectrum license.
> Given that anyone who can afford the cost of an 802.11 card can
> transmit in the
> bands where WiFi runs, *everyone with a WiFi card* is a potential
> source of interference.
>
> No amount of effort at "spectrum co-operation" will reduce the
> ability of J. Random wireless user wandering into range of any
> other user of the same spectrum.
>
> Moreover, you can't complain (to anyone) in the US about
> "interference" with your part 15 (WiFi) devices. Almost literally,
> interference is *not defined* as far as the FCC is concerned for
> part 15 devices. (Every WiFi radio is a part 15 device.) Further,
> the FCC has held that it is against
> the law for the owner of a building to prohibit its tenants (who
> lease space) from installing and using part 15 devices (such as
> WiFi APs):
> http://www.utdmercury.com/media/paper691/news/2004/09/07/News/
> Truce.Declared.In.Wireless.War-715827.shtml
>
> This even applies to airports (a venue where I have considerable
> experience, given that I installed Austin, D/FW, SEA-TAC and San
> Jose, all
> prior to the end of 2000.)
>
> Another economic argument is that the cost of erecting the next AP
> is so low that its impossible to keep everyone from competing with
> you.
>
> Finally, customers will pay for service, but the very fact that you
> have to run WiFi in an uncontrolled interference environment makes
> any such
> service shaky at best.
>
>> The problem with free proponents is that they have always failed
>> to provide a business model for free access. Of course, the end-
>> user will always choose free, but who will provide them with this
>> free access, and who will answer the phone when they call to ask
>> for help in setting up their laptop.
>
> There are many examples of business owners installing "free" WiFi
> in order to supply a service
>
> Lets play a little word game:
>
> The problem with free toilet proponents is that they have always
> failed to provide a business model for free (bathroom) access. Of
> course, the end-user will always choose free, but who will provide
> them with this free (bathroom) access, and who will clean the
> bathroom so its presentable to the user? As well as, "MY God! Can
> you imagine the cost of just the TOILET PAPER" if we let EVERYONE
> use our bathroom!?!?"
>
> Answer: the owner (or management) of the establishment.
>
>> I also think we will begin to get some press on problems with
>> "open access" or what I like to call "free love Wi-Fi". This is
>> when your neighbor has an access point and does not lock it down
>> and allows anyone and everyone to share in his connection (love).
>
> Wow. completely different subject. Did you mean to cloud the issue?
>
>> The problems are:
>> 1. Anyone can setup a probe and sit there and gather tremendous
>> amounts of data from the packets being sent across.
>
> Well, anyone *within range*, sure. Even the best antenna isn't
> going to allow you to connect off-island. :-)
>
> But still, most WISPS operate a "captive portal", which does
> nothing to prevent these types of sniffing attacks, either. (WPA
> does!)
>
>> 2. Anyone could connect to his access point and send spam or do
>> illegal activities. Who will the FBI come after? The access point
>> owner because they will first track down the IP address owner.
>> There have already been some stories surfacing on this problem.
>
> OTOH, the mere presence of an open AP could also provide an alibi
> for the owner engaging in these activities as well.
>
> Further, the "captive portal" employed by most WISPS provides ZERO
> protection against an authenticated, established connection being
> hijacked.
> I can sit in a Starbucks and hijack someone else's connection:
>
> a) s/he pays, not I
> b) s/he gets fingered by t-mobile as the perp, not I
> c) s/he has a harder time "proving" that s/he didn't engage in the
> activiites "of interest", since s/he has t-mobile pointing at her/him.
>
> The same hijack attack can be mounted against home APs as well,
> were they to employ the normal WISP tool (a captive portal).
>
> BTW, WPA prevents session hijacking.
>
> FYI, Wayport was getting hit with over 20 FBI subpoenas per month
> before I left, and that was for wired ports, mostly. All service
> providers will have to deal with this. But if the AP is open, then
> the "I really don't know" defense is quite effective.
>
>> 3. The access point owner could be setting up a "free" hotspot to
>> use to gather information about people that connect to his access
>> point.
>
> Nothing prevents a non-free hotspot from doing the same thing.
> Google for "wireless honeypot" sometime.
>
>> 4. It's cool to share your connection for a while, but when your
>> connection starts to bog down, or you can't stream or download
>> your MP3's from Napster because you have 10 leaches attached to
>> your access point, people will begin to shut it down.
>
> How does a WISP prevent this? (They'll try to throttle bandwidth,
> but that will just piss-off the dedicated downloader, who can then
> mount relatively trivial attacks against the WISP infrastructure,
> bringing down the net for everyone on the AP.)
>
>> With ID theft, spam and illegal Internet activity growing
>> exponentially, it won't be long until stories start to appear on
>> this subject and people will start to lock down their access points.
>
> It will have to be EZ for them to do so before they will.
>
>> The industry has tried free Internet and every time free fails in
>> the face of profits. What happened to NetZero? What happened the
>> the thousands of Internet company "selling" their free stuff.
>> Ultimately someone has to pay for it. We've proven this time and
>> time again.
>
> netzero still exists.
>
>
>> And with spam blockers now in full force, you can't even rely on
>> pop-up ads (even if you could find someone to pay for pop-up
>> adverstising).
>
> what does this mean?
>
>> Nam
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: stewart yerton [mailto:syerton at bizjournals.com]
>> Sent: Tuesday, May 31, 2005 8:24 AM
>> To: Jim Thompson
>> Cc: austinwireless at austinwireless.net; info at shaka.net;
>> nam.vu at shaka.net; LUAU; rod.tateyama at HALEKULANI.COM; Glenn Fleischman
>> Subject: Re: [AWN] Wi-Fi traffic jam in Hawaii
>>
>> Gentlemen,
>>
>> Before this missive, I knew that I was ignorant about many of the
>> technical aspects of WiFi, but the level of ignorance this letter
>> suggests shocks even me. Although it sounds like we might need a
>> few days to finish cataloguing the errors, I would appreciate a
>> call from someone who could help me get things straight for future
>> stories.
>>
>> Thanks for your time and help.
>>
>> Sincerely,
>> Stewart Yerton
>>
>> Jim Thompson wrote:
>>>
>>> On May 30, 2005, at 2:46 AM, Jon Lebkowsky wrote:
>>>
>>>> Maybe Jim Thompson should wander over to Waikiki and help these
>>>> guys out...
>>>
>>> Hmm. Thanks Jon, but I doubt, (curmudgeon that I am) they'd
>>> welcome my participation.
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Group tries to unsnarl Wi-Fi traffic jam
>>>>
>>>> Stewart Yerton
>>>> Pacific Business News (Honolulu)
>>>> May 30, 2005
>>>>
>>>> At the posh Halekulani Hotel in Waikiki, guests receive a host
>>>> of niceties: cotton robes, fancy toiletries and a 27-inch flat-
>>>> screen television.
>>>
>>> with the view out the window being what it is, who wants to watch
>>> TV?
>>>
>>>> But there's one amenity at the Halekulani that's getting
>>>> interference from the outside world: the hotel's wireless
>>>> Internet service.
>>>>
>>>> Rod Tateyama, the Halekulani's information technology manager,
>>>> said the hotel had no problems when it set up its Wi-Fi system
>>>> for guests several years ago.
>>>>
>>>> But as other properties have set up systems and firms compete to
>>>> offer Wi-Fi service for everyone from banks to coffee shops, the
>>>> result is a traffic jam on the airwaves.
>>>>
>>>> "It is affecting us," he said, Tateyama said, complaining that
>>>> other Wi-Fi bands are "bleeding in" to the property and slowing
>>>> access.
>>>
>>> Hmm, I doubt its "slowing access", though it may be causing
>>> retransmits. In fact, the problem could be that the original
>>> design was flawed,
>>> and increasing usage merely shows the flaws. I can't tell, of
>>> course, since I haven't looked at the Halekulani's deployment.
>>>
>>> BTW Rod, I'm more than willing to take a look "for free".
>>>
>>>> In the bustling, mostly unregulated world of the wireless
>>>> Internet, Waikiki is turning into Wi-Fi-kiki, with more users
>>>> competing for access that can be slow, unreliable, confusing,
>>>> overlapping or nonexistent.
>>>>
>>>> "It's not smart deployment. It's not what I'd like to see
>>>> ideally down there," said Nam Vu, chief technology officer of
>>>> ShakaNet Inc., which provides Internet kiosks and Wi-Fi service
>>>> throughout Honolulu.
>>>
>>> ShakaNet is a for-pay provider. As I've explained many times, in
>>> many places, since before my days at Vivato, "You can't provide a
>>> service in unlicensed spectrum" (sometimes stated as, "You can't
>>> provide a service in an uncontrolled interference environment.")
>>>
>>>> "But there's a time period in which everything's going to be
>>>> this way until everyone says, 'OK, let's sit down and figure out
>>>> a way to do this better.' "
>>>
>>> Hopefully, someone who actually understands the issues at both
>>> the RF and MAC layer will be present, or we'll hear a lot about
>>> "3 non-overlapping channels", and no solution will take form.
>>> Given my wanderings around the community here, not even the (now
>>> ex) guys at Firetide knew much about 802.11, treating it as a
>>> simple and inexpensive "wireless Ethernet" connection, when, in
>>> fact, it isn't.
>>>
>>>> Now a coalition of business leaders is hoping to do just that.
>>>> Facing increasing expectations from visitors accustomed to
>>>> accessing the Internet from almost anywhere, the group hopes to
>>>> bring order to the chaos.
>>>
>>> Note the lack of community wireless involvement. Hmm.
>>>
>>>> Known as the Hawaii Wireless Council, the organization wants to
>>>> untangle the knot of business and technical issues hindering the
>>>> development of a seamless Wi-Fi system stretching from Honolulu
>>>> International Airport to Diamond Head.
>>>>
>>>> The Hawaii Wireless Council will be modeled loosely on the
>>>> Hawaii Life Sciences Council, a nonprofit group spun out of
>>>> Enterprise Honolulu, a local economic development organization,
>>>> said John Strom, Enterprise Honolulu's director of business
>>>> development and technology.
>>>>
>>>> The Hawaii Life Sciences Council includes representatives of the
>>>> University of Hawaii, Hawaii health-care providers and private
>>>> industry. The wireless council would assemble a similar
>>>> assortment of people involved in the industry, Strom said.
>>>>
>>>> The problems with Wi-Fi in Waikiki involve a lack of regulation
>>>> and the relatively low cost of setting up a system. And they are
>>>> not limited to the interference at places like the Halekulani.
>>>
>>> "Lack of regulation" and "low cost" aren't problems with WiFi,
>>> they are the *very reasons for its success*.
>>>
>>>> In simple terms, Wi-Fi refers to systems that use a small patch
>>>> of the FM radio spectrum to send signals between computers and
>>>> the Internet. Thus, a wireless transmitter is like a small FM
>>>> radio station with a range of perhaps 300 feet.
>>>
>>> "FM radio spectrum"?
>>>
>>> In most of the world, the FM broadcast band goes from 87.5MHz to
>>> 108.0MHz. (In the US (ITU region 2) it starts at 87.8MHz, due to
>>> the presence of TV channel 6), while WiFi runs at 2400MHz -
>>> 2483.5MHz, as well as in several "bands" between 5150MHz and
>>> 5850MHz.
>>>
>>> So even the lowest WiFi band is some 23X the frequency of the FM
>>> broadcast band. (Which is licensed spectrum, btw.)
>>>
>>> Note also the 20MHz of spectrum for "FM broadcast" compared with
>>> the 83Mhz of spectrum in the 2.4GHz band (where 802.11b and
>>> 802.11g run), and the hundreds of MHz of spectrum
>>> allocated in the band(s) where 802.11a run.
>>>
>>>> The problem is there are only a few channels for transmitting
>>>> information. So in a densely populated area like Waikiki, it's
>>>> as if there are a dozen or more small-power radio stations
>>>> operating on the same frequencies.
>>>
>>> The lack of channels isn't the entire, or even main problem.
>>>
>>>> "There's more and more people trying to access the same
>>>> capacity," Strom said.
>>>
>>> All other things being equal, there will always be more capacity
>>> in a single wire than there will be in an RF signal. Its simply
>>> insane and stupid to talk about "wireless capacity", especially
>>> as it relates to large coverage ranges. (Typically wireless
>>> capacity is expressed in bits/Mhz/m^2. Note that as the coverage
>>> area goes up, "capacity" goes down.)
>>>
>>>> Complicating the situation further, there are almost as many
>>>> business models as there are Wi-Fi hot spots where people can
>>>> log on without plugging in.
>>>
>>> There is no "WiFi business model" that has the guests of the
>>> network "paying" for access to an AP.
>>>
>>> Lemma: Free will always conquer non-free (price wins, all other
>>> things being equal)
>>>
>>> Fact, due to the economics of installing a lot of low power APs,
>>> most "WISPS" attempt to install extended coverage, using more
>>> powerful
>>> transmitters and antennas with more gain
>>> Problem: unless *things are perfect*, (which you can't guarantee,
>>> due to the unlicensed nature of the spectrum), these work to create
>>> more interference, not less.
>>>
>>> Fact, users don't care about any supposed advantage, they just
>>> want to be left alone, and to enjoy a periodic, low-cost (and,
>>> essentially free) connection.
>>>
>>> Fact, its trivial for the next person to install an AP, ruining
>>> your perfect deployment.
>>>
>>> Fact, I've seen a lot of "for pay" situations go free, with a
>>> massive improvement for everyone. I've even seen it happen on-
>>> island:
>>> http://www.smallworks.com/archives/00000204.htm
>>>
>>> Gentlemen, I started putting in "WiFi (or rather, 802.11b, which
>>> became WiFi) in 1999. Some of the people in Austin know that I
>>> was the CTO and VP of Engineering at Wayport back then. Many
>>> people in Hawaii don't. I've twisted the business model every
>>> which way, and they all fail in the face of free.
>>>
>>> Even Wayport has started to move toward an amenity model (a
>>> managed service where the hotel pays Wayport, but the guest never
>>> sees a line-item for Internet service), and, point of fact, their
>>> biggest hotel contracts require that the service is "free to
>>> guest". (I am still a Wayport shareholder, so I can't give
>>> details beyond this.)
>>>
>>> I asked Wayport's board of directors, 10 months before I
>>> resigned, "What are you going to do when its all free?". It took
>>> them over three years to develop an answer.
>>>
>>>> Some private firms are building Wi-Fi networks with transmitters
>>>> mounted on rooftops. These companies charge customers for
>>>> access, using a model similar to Internet service providers.
>>>> Skywave Broadband Inc., for instance, charges from $3.95 for an
>>>> hour to $39.95 for a month of access to its network.
>>>
>>> Skywave is a customer, and I still think they're doomed long-
>>> term. Of course, since Hawaii saw fit to allow Carlyle group to
>>> take over the ILEC, we won't be getting FIOS anytime son, so
>>> "long term" might be quite a bit longer in Hawaii than it would
>>> be in, say, Portland or Austin. Ah well, there is still the
>>> beach, and its not too cold (and not too hot) here.
>>>
>>> Oh yes, the girls wear bikinis year-round, thats nice too.
>>>
>>> And its 5:30am in Hawaii, and I'm still drinking. The kid will be
>>> up in an hour, and we'll get to go to the beach today. Yesterday
>>> we were at Punchbowl, putting flags and flowers on the graves
>>> with his Cub Scout Pack. http://www.alohacouncilbsa.org/welcome/
>>> punchbowl/05punchbowlBOOKLET.pdf
>>>
>>> Some things are far more important than WiFi, especially the for-
>>> pay kind.
>>>
>>>> The result is a patchwork that can spell confusion, especially
>>>> for visitors A laptop user might have to pay one rate to T-
>>>> Mobile at Borders, another rate to the service provider at
>>>> Barnes & Noble and yet another to Wayport, which provides access
>>>> at some McDonald's restaurants.
>>>
>>> Ah, well now we're talking about *roaming*, which is a different
>>> kettle of fish. Its still doomed. (BTW, the service provider at
>>> B&N is typically T-Mobile.)
>>>
>>> Jim
>>>
>
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