Free parking: municipal wi-fi
There's been a lot of stories about municipal governments looking at adding free or low-cost wi-fi as a public service. The NY Times has one today discussing Taipei's plans. New Orleans is also thinking about it, along with several Canadian and U.S. cities.
The opposition to the idea typically comes from telcos and their minions. They dislike the idea of free Internet access the way that I imagine vampires feel about Red Cross blood drives.
I love the idea of free access and I believe that any municipal government that does it, is going to be rewarded tenfold with increased retail foot traffic and a higher quality of life for its residents.
Some people don't get it yet. The business model on the Internet is not about paying for access, it's about content. When the infrastructure capital costs to put a city block online are $10k or so, we're talking about chimp change and we as consumers are not going to stand for being gouged on this.
The alternative, of course, is for vendors to buy a couple of hundred dollars worth of Linksys or DLink and do it themselves. There's some critical mass point at which everyone will have to offer free access in public places. I expect that it will become like parking in downtown areas. Some places use it as a revenue generator, some outsource it to 3rd parties, some offer free parking as a public service. My hats off to the enlightened towns that choose the latter.
Posted on June 28, 2006
