Autumn means the business traveling season starts up again, and it is becoming painfully clear that free WiFi access is becoming, like Alice’s Cheshire cat, a vanishing phenomenon.
Going through Gatwick, Heathrow, Glasgow and Munich airports, there was only one WiFi option in each airport, and each one cost. The same was true in the hotels.
The problem is that the single-option WiFi providers are the same people as those who provide 3G services.
And the 3G network operators, I fancy, want to promote 3G at the expense of WiFi because 3G is more protectable.
Therefore WiFi is getting priced higher and higher and, unfortunately, this trend will likely continue unless something comes along to disrupt it.
The public authorities seem disinclined to interfere. The argument deployed by the 3G network operators is: ‘In buying our 3G licences we were given to understand we were buying a limited monopoly, and we should be allowed to protect our limited monopolies’.
This does not bode well for the setting up of Wimax networks insofar as they can be used for mobile connectivity.
This is because the public authorities in many countries have not yet allocated spectrum for Wimax. GHz spectrum will limit range. Licence auctions may see non-traditional wannabee wireless providers forced out by too high prices.
The 3G operators have all sorts of strategies to urge on the public authorities to hobble, limit or kill Wimax.
Clearly there’s going to be a Battle Royal between the non-traditional wireless wannabees like Google, and the established wireless operators which bought 3G licences.
It’s about time the issue surfaced on the political agenda, because politics will decide the issue.
EU Commissioner Viviane Reding said in June that, as well as 2.6Ghz spectrum, some of the freed-up analogue TV spectrum in the 500-800MHz band, should be offered for mobile wirless incvluding Wimax.
But, at the end of the day, it's the politicians who will decide.
Of course Gordon's the guy who, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, was responsible for screwing the network operators by devising a fiendishly clever auction for 3G licences which seduced the operators into vastly over-paying for their licences.
Would he dare to screw them again?
I am glad I live in a town where a free-WiFi operator set up early, before discovering the (apparent) size of the market. I live in a coverage semi-hole, so had to get a rooftop antenna and box. I reported a technical glitch a few weeks ago, and now am getting personal e-mails from their fix-it guy about it, so he is clearly not super busy. Scary.
True, less and less airports are offering free WiFi. Last time I experienced that was in Malaysia airport. But then again, in some countries coffee shops are pushing WiFi as a selling point to attract visitors. They soon realized the unlimited access won't work, I've seen people download huge movies at coffee shops. So they started limiting it to X hours based on how much you spent at the coffee shop. That's where telco's kick in: pay Y a month and you get so many GB downloads... take it to a coffee shop or wherever.
Mark Martinez
your hypergain test lab