Free WiFi for my city of sails?
The free WiFi dream is over. Premier Iemma needs to give a few sad geeks a big hug. Daniel Long looks at the future of complimentary WiFi in Sydney.
Sydney is to become a baron WiFi wasteland. Why? Because nobody wants to pay for it, that’s why.
Chin up guys, wipe those geeky tears. It had to happen. It was inevitable – the free WiFi gravy train was too good to be true. Recent research citing free WiFi trials from the US suggest (regardless of Google’s good intentions) that the idea is a solid dud. The US failure to get the plan off and running is probably the very thing that scared the pants off the government from investing in a similar proposal here.
All that talk in 2006 of attracting more business to our town with free WiFi was just that – talk. It spurned eager politicians to deliver patronising speeches promising an age of digital grandeur. And it attempted to radicalise fence sitting geeks into party voters for the then upcoming election. But of course, somebody forgot to add up the costs of a project this size.
Talk was easy, but delivering on that talk has proved much harder for the Iemma government.
I wonder how many of the big decision makers at the top end of NSW parliament actually believed in this model WiFi utopia? Premier Iemma said it would attract more business to the city and increase our international competitiveness, but it all sounded a little too optimistic. "Universal access to wireless broadband in our CBDs will further boost the state's economy and make NSW more attractive for expanding or new businesses,", he was quoted as saying in the Sydney Morning Herald article almost 18 months ago.
Show me the proof
I can’t actually find one peer reviewed study, anywhere in the world that concludes free WiFi access encourages greater productivity and rewards a city with increased profitability. Sure, the tourists would love it, that’s for sure. And maybe those inner city high school kids might be able to catch a few WiFi signals and log onto their Facebook and Myspace accounts on the back of the bus, but none of that is going to balance the books when the bills fly in at the end of the month.
Token access
Unfortunately, free WiFi has never been taken seriously in this country. There are very, very few places where you can go and find a reliable free connection without paying for it.
However, sometimes, you’ll get lucky. You might find an unsecured connection, but it’s probably some poor halfwit who hasn’t protected their network with a password yet.
Libraries might offer free WiFi access, but expect to register for a password and a login account to take advantage at most of them, which is hardly convenient. And the occasional bar or cafe in Sydney may boast wireless access (usually very slow), but it’s nowhere near as varied or numerous as you would find throughout the digitally hip cities in Europe or Asia.
WiFi has the air of tokenism here, and that’s part of the overall broadband problem in Australia. It seems no company is going to provide a free WiFi lunch for users without a substantial revenue kickback.
An expensive pipe dream
That big cable that travels under the ocean to the other side of the world costs money. Big money. And the content that is churned across that pipe costs the ISPs money in return.
Any small businesses who take on the onus of this WiFi burden probably won’t see a decent return on their investment unless a form of advertising similar to free-to-air television is implemented to pay for the burden of these data costs.
Depend on Google to get things done
You’ll probably need oodles of money (or a very tight business model) to make free WiFi work on a large scale and that’s why the Google initative for free city wide access in San Francisco seemed so promising almost two years ago when it was paraded to the world media to gloat over.
But it never happened. Another WiFi casualty was added to the list.
Earthlink, the partner company that was banking on using Google’s advertising keywords to make the whole proposal cost effective, pulled the plug when it did the final sums. A second city wide network was to be installed in Houston, Texas, but Earthlink also pulled the plug on this project, citing major revenue hurdles as it tried in vain to forecast a return from offering free WiFi services. "We simply have not found a way in the old business model to make a return on our investment”, CEO Rolla Huff told CNet.com last year.
WiFi = happier tourists, but it’s not a free lunch
Does free WiFi really increase customer patronage? Its helped Starbucks sell coffee in the US, but so far, Aussie businesses aren’t exactly taking the plunge to go wireless at too many of the snack bars and restaurants I’ve visited. More often than not, if they do offer a WiFi connection, they often depend on third party carriers such as Telstra’s growing army of wireless hotspots. These same hotspots include overly expensive pay by the hour connections which aren’t very attractive to the average user.
Let’s face it - city wide free WiFi access is not a profitable, revenue raising activity, no matter how you sell it. If we can’t get our roads and hospitals upgraded, what hope do a few thousand geeks have for the millions of dollars it will take to fund a massive WiFi city portal?
As services such as 3G become faster and cheaper for the wireless crowd, the onus on building a city wide WiFi network is going to languish as a viable business decision and remain a pipe dream. And unless your dream can be sold with a monthly or hourly access fee, you should just keep on dreaming.
What do you think? Should WiFi be free, or is it a privilege we should have to pay for, like phone calls? Have your say below.
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