Friday, May 21, 2004
Sky Dayton on Cometa's failure
Does Cometa's failure presage the collapse of the pay-hotspot business, or is it simply an AT&T-style inability to execute? WiFi Networking News has a statement from Sky Dayton, founder of Boingo -- another pay-hotspot provider -- that testifies to the latter. Dayton says:
Cometa might have failed to execute, but that's no indicator that the pay-hotspot biz will succeed.
Cometa . . . spent too much money before [it] needed to and demanded carriers pay high minimums for access to a network that wasn’t yet built . . . Boingo had attempted to strike a roaming agreement with Cometa, but they claimed to not be interested. Even though their network wasn’t much more than a promise, they were acting as if they were already the market leader. They succeeded in alienating the very people they needed to help them succeed.I used to be a Boingo fan before I realized how cheap and easy it was to do a hotspot, and before I had a couple of nasty pay-hotspot experiences, the first of which was my inability (probably due to my own stupidity) to sign up as a Boingo subscriber.
Cometa might have failed to execute, but that's no indicator that the pay-hotspot biz will succeed.
Comments:
David,
I posted an article on Muniwireless about Francois Nonnenmacher's horrible T-Mobile Wi-Fi hotspot experience in London. See http://www.muniwireless.com/archives/000330.html. Since that post, I've received several emails from people with the same (and even worse) experiences with paid-for hotspots. They are all now active seekers of free Wi-Fi wherever they go. And these are all business people, the target market of the billing/roaming mafia.
I'd say the primary cause is plain old BAD service and high prices.
Esme
I posted an article on Muniwireless about Francois Nonnenmacher's horrible T-Mobile Wi-Fi hotspot experience in London. See http://www.muniwireless.com/archives/000330.html. Since that post, I've received several emails from people with the same (and even worse) experiences with paid-for hotspots. They are all now active seekers of free Wi-Fi wherever they go. And these are all business people, the target market of the billing/roaming mafia.
I'd say the primary cause is plain old BAD service and high prices.
Esme
The real problem with WiFi is that the direct costs of service are so much smaller than the transactional costs of attempting to bill anybody, that when you add back in the potential Brand damage (because brands are about promises kept) due to sour experiences, the only logical thing to do go naked. aka Free Access.
Now one has to wonder will the RBOCs will clue the business insurance industry onto a brand new revenue source or explicit rider declaration, about 'access gone bad'. If a terrorist triggers a bomb over your 'free' 802.11 access point, are you liable?
Anybody know?
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Now one has to wonder will the RBOCs will clue the business insurance industry onto a brand new revenue source or explicit rider declaration, about 'access gone bad'. If a terrorist triggers a bomb over your 'free' 802.11 access point, are you liable?
Anybody know?
# posted by 
: 5/23/2004 4:08 PM
: 5/23/2004 4:08 PM
