On 7 Jun 2004, Andy Warner wrote:
> Apologies in advance if this ends up being one of those
> "subscriber-only" pages that drops you through to a
> login screen; but the NYTimes carried the following article
> about the growth of free hot-spots, contrasted with
> the fortunes of pay-per-use hot spots; along with the
> struggle to find a sustainable business model for
> the pay-per-use carriers.
> -- 

Yep...it was a login page...here's the text...

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/07/technology/07wifi.html?8hpib=&pagewanted=
all&position=

New York Times 

June 7, 2004
Where Entrepreneurs Go and the Internet Is Free
By MATT RICHTEL

SAN FRANCISCO, June 6 - Linda Branagan would seem to be the ideal customer
for entrepreneurs and telecommunications companies looking to make money
selling wireless Internet connections. But, like thousands of business road
warriors, Ms. Branagan often does not pay for the service because she gets
it free.

At cafes, malls and downtown business districts, there has been an
explosion of Internet access points, or Wi-Fi hot spots, that let computer
users log on to the Internet for free. That growth is a fundamental reason
- though not the only one - that technology start-ups, investors and
industry analysts who had high hopes for Wi-Fi are scrambling to find
sustainable business models.

Ms. Branagan, a director of a medical device research company, pays
T-Mobile, a unit of Deutsche Telekom, $6 an hour for a wireless Internet
connection when she is in airports if there are no free access points. But
it is another matter when she is working outside the office in San
Francisco.

"The Internet is free here," she said, as she sat doing research at The
Canvas, an art gallery with a lounge and cafe setting in San Francisco's
Sunset district. "Why would I pay T-Mobile?" she asked, when the cafe
owners provide free Internet access to attract patrons.

The number of Wi-Fi hot spots has grown rapidly in the last year, with as
many as 15,000 in operation in public locations, according to the Yankee
Group, a market research firm.

But the difficulty of making a profit was made evident last month with the
demise of Cometa Networks, a well-heeled Wi-Fi start-up backed by I.B.M.,
the Intel Corporation and the AT&T Corporation. Cometa, founded in 2002 to
build a network of access points at retail outlets, announced on May 19
that it would suspend operations because it was not providing a suitable
return to investors. Verizon Wireless, which said last year that it would
build 1,000 Wi-Fi hot spots in Manhattan, has cut that number to around
500.

Meanwhile, thousands of free hot spots have been established by public
agencies, mom-and-pop businesses hoping to attract customers and
individuals working to build a grass-roots based network. A handful of city
governments, some in cooperation with local businesses, are deploying free
Wi-Fi networks in parts of Jacksonville, Fla., lower Manhattan and
Portland, Ore., among other places.

"It's going to be hard for commercial carriers to make a profit," said
Dewayne Hendricks, the chief executive of Dandin Group, a wireless Internet
service provider based in Silicon Valley, who serves as technical adviser
to the Federal Communications Commission on wireless Internet issues.

Mr. Hendricks said the remarkable spread of free networks was forcing
commercial carriers to rethink their strategies.

"The infrastructure is being built from the bottom up," Mr. Hendricks said,
referring to a municipal and grass-roots effort to deploy wireless
connections. "How that plays out is potentially monumental," he said in
affecting the way Internet access is provided.

Each Wi-Fi hot spot has a radio transmitter and receiver that is connected
to the Internet through a broadband connection like a digital subscriber
line, or D.S.L. The transmitter communicates with personal computers and
enables them to send information to, and receive information from, the
Internet. The transmitters typically have a range of 150 to 1,000 feet,
though there is new technology emerging that could send a signal over
several miles.

Because transmitters can be on different networks, a dozen or more hot
spots can operate simultaneously in any given area, providing overlapping
coverage. The connections do not interfere with each other because they are
working on different radio channels. For users in big metropolitan areas
like New York City and San Francisco, a free connection can almost always
be found on blocks where hot spots are dense.

Even so, not all companies selling Wi-Fi service are struggling. T-Mobile,
for one, has a well-established and profitable business model, said Roberta
Wiggins, an analyst with the Yankee Group.

T-Mobile has 4,650 Wi-Fi hot spots in Kinko's, Borders Bookstores, hotels,
airports and Starbucks cafes, and it is adding 35 a day, the company said.
Last week, it announced plans to deploy hot-spot connections in 122 Hyatt
Hotels in North America. Users pay $9.95 for single-day access, $29.99 for
a monthly access to all hot spots in the network or $19.95 a month if they
are customers of T-Mobile's cellphone service.

The company would not disclose how many customers it has, or its revenue or
profits. But Joe Sims, general manager of T-Mobile's Wi-Fi business, said,
"We fully expect to make money in the public hot-spot business." He noted
that the company has learned some important lessons - namely, that the hot
spots need to be in locations with heavy traffic from business customers
and that a profitable Wi-Fi business needs to build a national network and
brand that will give users the ability to log on at a variety of locations
using the same service.

In the case of T-Mobile, he said, the company is keeping costs low by
having the Wi-Fi division and its mobile-phone business share an underlying
data network, as well as the network operation and customer call centers.
Mr. Sims also he said the company is exploiting its brand name by marketing
the wireless connection service to its existing cellphone customer base of
14.3 million users.

Mr. Sims said he is not worried about the growth in free hot spots because
he believes commercial networks can offer more reliable, more secure
Internet access. Free service is fine for casual and periodic use, he said,
but "when you absolutely, positively have to get that report downloaded or
get access to your company system to conduct business, free probably isn't
going to cut it."

Indeed, when Ms. Branagan, 37, travels for business, she said she pays
T-Mobile on an hourly basis for Internet access, mostly while waiting in
the United Airlines Red Carpet room, where there is no free option. She
added that she probably would sign up for a longer-term plan if the service
were less expensive.

Sitting beside her at the San Francisco cafe was Paul Hagen, 39, who runs a
technology consulting company. Mr. Hagen said he would consider subscribing
to a Wi-Fi plan if there were a provider that offered universal access to
hot spots everywhere.

That challenge - giving consumers the ability to pay for a single plan that
covers hot spots in a variety of locations - may be essential to growth in
the service, according to industry analysts.

In the cellphone industry, universal access is accomplished by "roaming
agreements" that let the customers of one mobile-phone provider use the
network of a competitor. Most roaming agreements in the Wi-Fi business,
said Mr. Sims of T-Mobile, are still relatively limited.

In other respects, too, the Wi-Fi business may well go the way of other
telecommunications services, said Ms. Wiggins of the Yankee Group, in that
it could become dominated by telecommunications companies that already sell
cellular, Internet and landline phone services in bundled plans.

SBC Communications Inc., the regional phone company based in San Antonio,
previously said it would roll out 3,000 hot spots by the end of next year,
largely at UPS retail outlets. And in an announcement planned for Monday,
SBC said it plans to offer access in 6,000 McDonald's outlets around the
country.

The cost is $19.95 a month for unlimited access. But Michael Coe, an SBC
spokesman, said the company ultimately planned to offer a substantial
discount to its existing customers. He said that SBC did not expect its hot
spots to become a stand-alone business, but rather an offering along side
cellular, Internet and land-based telephone service.

While Wi-Fi "offers a revenue generating opportunity," he said, "it's real
benefit to SBC is as a customer retention and acquisition tool."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company


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