The Land of the 'Free' Hot Spots

Computerworld - Sometime soon, Boingo Wireless, a Wi-Fi wireless hot-spot service provider, will launch a product I've been bugging the company about for a long time: a Macintosh client. But now that it's almost a reality, I find myself wondering if it's too late.
Not that I've stopped using a Mac when I travel. Despite Apple's quality-control problems and the occasional application I'd like to use that runs only on Windows, I'm still a Mac user and will probably remain one for the most part.
The reason I wonder if it's too late for Boingo to be useful for me is that I have doubts about the entire business model of charging for Wi-Fi access. I'm just not convinced that it makes sense.
Now, I'm not suggesting that Wi-Fi should be "free" in any serious way. What I question is the idea that hot-spot providers can charge high rates except in a fairly small set of circumstances.
The cost of setting up a hot spot is being driven down, down, down. Once you have a connection to the Internet, adding an access point is dirt-cheap.
More and more businesses are seeing value in adding hot spots and offering access as part of their overall service -- something like the free glass of tap water you get at the restaurant before you order your meal.
If a coffee house offers me access, I'm likely to stay longer and drink more coffee. How many extra cups of coffee does a store owner have to sell every week to cover the cost of the hot spot and make a little extra? I'd wager not very many.
I'm also baffled by some of the locations I've seen offering wireless access. Whether you're a fan of fast food or not, the idea of taking a laptop to McDonald's seems a little weird. My keyboard is the last place I'd tend to put my fingers right after eating greasy food.
Nevertheless, there are sometimes excellent reasons to use commercial hot spots. The best reason, if the most annoying, is that you have no choice. Airports and hotels tend to lease "air rights" to commercial providers, and sometimes the only way to catch up with e-mail on a trip is to use the commercial service.
Another good reason is something Boingo understands: the need for security in a notoriously insecure environment. Boingo creates an encrypted virtual private network tunnel from the user's computer back to its own servers, a feature that adds genuine value. I have a VPN tomy company's servers and use a Secure Shell server to get to my own domain, so I don't really need this feature. Nonetheless, Boingo deserves kudos for providing some security for people who don't have this kind of infrastructure.
The commercial services still don't have enough access points. They'll need to solve that problem before they have a long-range hope of getting my ongoing business.
Meanwhile, I'm still looking for "free" hot spots. There are enough of them for the average user, with more emerging all the time. That should worry the commercial providers.
Dan Gillmor is technology columnist at the San Jose Mercury News. Contact him at dgillmor@sjmercury.com.

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