D.C. Denison at the Globe has an excellent article on the state of Wifi distribution. There are about 100 hotspots in Boston now, and over 150 in NYC. Still, those numbers sem paltry. But it’ll change; Denison quotes Sarah Kim, an analyst with The Yankee Group:

”Most of the major universities now offer WiFi to students on campus,” she said. ”That means that many college students are getting, and using, laptops with wireless cards. And then they bring those laptops along with them when they graduate, and go out and get jobs. So those students are going to drive adoption, too.”

Mainly what will drive adoption is that it’s easier to create a hotspot than to force people to pay for it. Denison recounts the story of Michael Oh. On Labor Day, Michael positioned a black Saturn Coupe with a 6-foot Wifi antenna across the street from a Starbucks. Starbucks charges $3 for every 15 minutes of use, while Oh’s Saturn charged $0.00 for all-day usage. The reaction of the company that provides Starbucks with connectivity actually was pretty enlightened: ”There’s a place for those vendors. But our customers want to know who they are dealing with. They want security and the reliability that comes with a real network company.”

But mainly we want free connectivity everywhere.

You can read Denison’s article here until the Globe locks it in its 15-minutes-for-$3 archive.

Categories: Uncategorized dw