I am preparing an article but want to get some community interaction on it first. Three points:

• Boingo has thousands of hotspots for one subscription plan
• DeviceScape allows users to auto-login to known hotspots
• The Nokia N810 has a GPS, OS2008 has GPSD in the core, and the N800 can use that with a Bluetooth GPS

It's clear what this implies. Discuss!

It's too bad Boingo has almost no hotspots in my area at all.
And the one they do have in my area is the one I already use daily and for free.

Dan, have you tried the Boingo app already?

Not yet. I am off all week next week (transition between old job and new) and planned on doing more away-from-home articles.

Eh. There are exactly 0 Boingo hotspots in my city, and the ones in the nearest cities (OKC and Tulsa, 1.5 hours away each) are either in the five Barnes & Noble bookstores, or for hotel guests only.

(For the entire state of Oklahoma -- 38 hotspots. 5 of those are B&N, 1 is one level of the airport, 3 are restaurants/bars in very tiny towns, and the rest are hotels.)

On the other hand, Stillwater is practically blanketed in free wifi hotspots, due to the vast majority of restaurants in town offering it. This probably has something to do with the university and All Those Students, a fairly demanding market.

What is probably more useful is something like http://www.wififreespot.com/, which lists (user-added) free wifi hotspots, and certainly has a much bigger list than just what Boingo does for a fee.

-Jennifer

Do you have any municipal wifi other than Boingo?

I see what you want to imply with GPS use, but I fail to see the interest. Hotspots who belong to a given network, say boingo or t-mobile, can use the same ssid all over and then the Nokia (and other) can connect automatically.

More interesting is the point "certificates" in the OS2008. That can be used to implement an automatic login procedure for a wifi network. You give each paying user an individual certificate, and a challenge is used to log in without sending a password in the clear. Maybe a network operator will be interested.


Last but not least, I find wifi networks overrated. You can't really use them to be logged on all the time (as in GSM or UMTS netowrks), because of the limited coverage. This in turn reduces their usefulness for email or voip. So basically, the use I can imagine for them are:

-quickly checking for a price or a map when e.g. shopping. Networks adapted to this usage can be deployed in malls, and some malls already have a free one available to their customers: wifi is cheap and free wifi is a simple and cheap way to try to attract new customers.

-being able to use you lap- or palmtop when seated somewhere, typically at coffee or lunch. Here again, some cafes and restaurants have found out that they can attract customers by offering this service for free.

In the end, I think that wifi networks are way too expensive, considering that the competition is free as explained above. The only additionnal service that they can offer is to be at locations where lots of people need them or at locations where they are easy to find. This is the business model of T-online, who has hotspots in airports and train stations and in each macdonalds burger joint. This is quite a different business model than ubiquitous broadband.


In the end, if you want to be always on line (e.g. for mail as with the blackberry or for phone), you'll have to use cell phone technology, e.g. UMTS and Edge/GPRS. This is the direction taken by Apple with the iPhone or by Nokia in the Communicator series, BTW. Both devices can also use wifi when it is available, of course.


There are a few other comments I'd like to make on the subject. First, nobody has yet proven that there is a market for ubiquitous internet. The technology has existed for a few years with UMTS in Europe, but people are not willing to pay for it. Second, wifi is not adapted for wide range coverage in real use: when clients are at very different distances (near and close) the client which is further away can't really keep the connection.

Jerome, I agree with your comments about WiFi. Unless you live in a city with WiFi on every pole, you can only use it for intermittent connections. Useful, but not ubiquitous.

The solution is cellular data or WiMAX, which typically has much better coverage.

The market for ubiquitous internet will appear when the charges become reasonable. In some countries (USA) they are there or very close. But in others (like Canada) you simply can't afford to make much use of it. But that will change with time.

One of the things my city has done right is to have free wifi downtown, by the museums and river walk. The system was put in for the police and opened in certain areas to all. In my neighborhood my N800 sees the Police hotspot but won't let me log in. But, where it is allowed it works well. I live in a town with about 100,000.

McDonalds uses Wayport and Krystal is open and free. Some iPass at hotels. I've been told the Barnes and Noble book store is free. At several shopping centers Quiznos has free wifi and so does Staples.
If you're an AT&T High Speed Internet Pro, Elite, Fast Access DSL Xtreme, Xtreme 6.0 or AT&T U-verse customers you are already signed up for free. I haven't tried that yet but apparently it's the provider at the UPS stores. One morning I was at a neighborhood Ace Hardware and I logged on to check my e-mail. I couldn't believe that one hospital here offers open wifi and the other doesn't.

Good luck with your research.

I am not really sure that the market for ubiquitous internet will appear. When I talk about it around me, only geeks see the point.

Cell phone was a worldwide success, because everybody can talk and wants to talk to other human beings. On the other hand, visiophones never took up. What is the perceived use for ubiquitous internet access? Being able to look things up? People don't do that, they ask other people. Being able to watch things, like small videos? Only kids do that, e.g. on the new iPods, most adults want a bigger screen. Being able to read things, like news or story? Books and newspapers are a far simpler solution.
The only use that people would have would be e-mail, and most people use sms for that (mobile email).

Predicting a success for mobile internet is, IMO, underestimating the psychology of people. People want to communicate with other people, with their friends and colleagues, not with computer servers. For that talking is the natural medium. The only reason why sms are widely used, it because they are perceived as less intrusive.


OTOH, small terminals (which is not the same thing as "ubiquitous internet") may have a vast market, especially in Asia. Asia has the network infrastructure, but many people aren't online yet. And small gadgets are popular (I was in China 6 months ago, I could not believe the number of small video players offered for sale). No surprise that Apple is courting China telecom at present...


Underestimating regional differences is a big problem on this forum, BTW. Most members see the situation from the POV of large US cities, where driving to the mall is common and 3g cellular only starting. The situation in Europe (where I live) is vastly different, and is even different between countries (e.g. Germany, France, which I now very well are very different). After a trip to Asia (China and Singapore), I realised that the situation was vastly different AGAIN. And you need the big picture to realise what can work and what cannot. The only think which never changes is human need for interaction. Young men's propension to impress their fellows or women with shiny fashionable gadgets is also a constant, of course.