Mobile working Toolkit

Wi-Fi Week: Should all hot spots be free?

Graeme Wearden ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 27 Jan 2004 15:10 GMT

On Monday, BT launched its wireless broadband week. Anyone visiting one of its 1,700 Openzone Wi-Fi hot spots between 26 January and 1 February will be entitled to free, unlimited access to BT Openzone for seven days.

This scheme is meant to drum up more interest in Wi-Fi from the public, especially laptops owners who might fancy working or surfing the Web from a coffee shop, railway station or hotel.

But many in the industry fear that the UK's Wi-Fi market is in need of more than just a short-term freebie. Take-up is rumoured to be very disappointing -- often, if you log on at a Wi-Fi hot spot, you'll find you're the only person on the network.

That's great news if you want lots of bandwidth but rather grim for the likes of The Cloud, Surf and Sip, T-Mobile and Swisscom Eurospot. Since June 2002, when the government made it legal for companies to run commercial Wi-Fi networks, many operators have joined BT in rolling out services across Britain.

It's hard to say precisely how well or badly these services are performing, as the companies are notoriously reluctant to give out usage figures. But both anecdotal evidence and occasional whispers from insiders suggest that take-up has been poor.

There are a variety of reasons why commercial Wi-Fi is failing to set the UK alight, and during this week ZDNet UK will address them in turn.

One key factor is price. It normally costs about £5 to get 60 minutes of Wi-Fi access. Compare that to the £1 you'd expect to pay for an hour at an Internet cafe, where you aren't even expected to bring along your own machine. A monthly pass can set you back more than £80 -- more than you might pay on hire purchase for a laptop -- even though you'll gain access to only one network (more on this topic later this week).

Analysts such as Ross Pow of Analysys Research have already warned that Wi-Fi prices are too high.

But making the technology a bit cheaper might not be the answer.

Theo Platt, director of wireless operator Broadscape, believes he has evidence that charging for Wi-Fi access simply may not be sustainable.

Broadscape runs a number of "virtually free" hot spots for the Benugo's sandwich chain, where customers who spend a couple of pounds on their food and drink get 30 minutes of free Wi-Fi access.