No, It Costs $50 To Build A Hotspot
Somewhat simplifying the issue of setting up commercial hotspots is Telerama, who is trumpeting that companies spending $1,000 or more for each hotspot they set up are overpaying. Telerama says, based on the traffic most hotspots get, there's no reason not to just set up a $50/month DSL line with $50 or so worth of equipment to give locations WiFi. Of course, no one denies that you can set up a hotspot on the cheap. The ones that are more expensive are trying to offer a higher level of service and additional features as well. Also interesting is that the folks from Telerama seem to be bragging that they're snooping on all the traffic going over their network. They actually are quoted saying: "We can look at a user's session and tell them, for example, that they misspelled 'Yahoo!'" Don't know about you, but I'd feel more comfortable with a WiFi provider that wasn't actively snooping through the traffic I was using.
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