Can Public Hotspots Make Money?
from the forget-it dept
With all the hype about Wifi hotspots lately, most people still don't think it's possible to make money by offering public Wifi access. The economics just don't support it, according to people in the industry. Some companies figure the best plan is just to focus on business travelers. However, some think that the "coffee shop" model, could work. By offering wireless access as a way to draw people into coffe shops and restaurants, it could be useful as a marketing tool to get more customers. I think a lot of the problem is that many people simply don't know about or understand Wifi right now. As more computers get integrated WiFi and people get used to using wireless access in the home, demand will increase for hotspots in more public places.
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Of course...
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what's to stop...
buying the food/coffee is kind of like asking if i looked at the ads on hotmail...not often, but a 'sale' every once in awhile keeps the revenue flowing...
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Could work
The question is, how much will it cost to set up and maintain these networks, and will they be easy to keep running. If you advertise WiFi and don't deliver, that's worse than not offering it in the first place.
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PPFA protocol
Linux/*BSD .iso image, some spare hardware with
two NICs + port 80/25/110 redirector.
Customer walks in, turns on netstumbler, gets
assigned an IP address, tries to browse, sees
a page saying 50cents per 1 hour DHCP lease...
please pay with paypal.
build the image/solution and split the revenue
with the access point/bandwidth/gateway hardware
owner/provider. Probably have to use some crypto
to keep the pirates from duping the idea by just
changing the paypal destination account.
Of course it would be even slicker if you reverse
engineered the firmware for popular access points,
accomplishing the same sort of solution and then
war drived around installing it on unsecured
access points. I guess you'd need one of those
off-shore PayPal accounts then...
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Re: PPFA Protocol
Sun keeps talking about the "network identity"...
What a buch of crap. The only idenity that
should be required on the net is the ability to
pay.
Authentication by Payment... I like the sound of
that.
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