Advertising-sponsored free wireless Internet service is not a new idea, but until recently there haven’t been enough “big players” involved in the concept to make it available throughout any major metropolitan area of the United States. Finally, Google and EarthLink teamed up a few years back for a proposed free WiFi service that would cover the entire San Francisco metropolitan area, though inexplicably, Google backed out of the deal in 2007.
Now a new wireless networking company, Meraki, is planning to take over where Google left off by completing the San Francisco free WiFi project. Meraki will pay for the extensive infrastructure by including advertising in its free wireless service, and the signal strength will depend largely upon “volunteers” who allow wireless repeaters to be placed on the roofs of their homes.
Back when Google and EarthLink first established the idea of citywide free sponsored WiFi throughout San Francisco, it was a fairly radical idea. At that time there were no other major metropolitan areas that were completely covered by WiFi Internet access — much less for free.
But in the two years since the first proposal of the idea things have changed a great deal. Several Asian cities, including Hong Kong, are now 80-90% covered by wireless Internet access. European cities such as Paris, Rotterdam, Oslo and Stockholm have also instigated city-wide WiFi, though most of these services require a modest monthly fee to use.
If Meraki can prove that advertising sponsored citywide WiFi is profitable in the Bay area, it is likely that other cities will begin to employ the same business model, including the European cities already enjoying city-wide WiFi access for a fee.
In the long run, companies can benefit much more from selling advertising on free WiFi networks than by charging monthly subscription fees. And as many city centers already have some type of free WiFi service available, it becomes more and more difficult to justify charging a fee for a service users could potentially get for free.
The goal of Meraki, and other advertising sponsored WiFi networks, is a WiFi connected world, where free WiFi service is available in any metropolitan or rural area. This would be the equivalent of the way over-the-air television networks broadcast today, so there is already a reliable business model to imitate in providing free WiFi access.
Meraki hopes to have the city-wide San Francisco free WiFi service available by the end of 2008. Over the next few years is likely that more American cities will follow in Meraki’s footsteps, and by 2012, analysts predict that 80% of all American metropolitan areas will be covered by an advertising sponsored wireless Internet network.
While this sounds like a dream come true for many computer geeks, it also ensures that Americans are going to be inundated with commercials for a long time to come. Now if someone could just invent some kind of TiVo for the Internet…
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Hi,
I coordinate the Meraki wireless mesh network awareness and support project in Canberra, Australia: Free Canberra Wireless.
We don’t have the support of Meraki like they do in San Francisco, but there is growing support in the few months the project has been running; still at proof of concept stage and we have a few networks in operation around town but so far things are looking very positive!
As for advertising, there is a small mast at the top of your browser that the network operator can place a message in; that could be used for small text advertising - plus there is a splash page when users first connect to the Meraki mesh network - this is an example of the splash page I have configured on my network “purecaffeine”.
There are also similar projects in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth.
Cheers,
Nathanael
Free Canberra Wireless
Comment by NathanaelB — January 15, 2008 @ 3:31 am