The Case for Free WiFi?

lgreco writes "Recently I was trying to convince a business man who is about to open an Internet Cafe, to provide WiFi at no charge. I argued about increased business and royalty and proposed that the infrastructure cost these days is reasonable and the recurring cost, along with the amortized payoff of the initial investment, can be recovered by adding a few cents to each beverage, etc. In spite of the numerous discussions on the merits of free WiFi v. paid at coffee shops, restaurants, etc, I was interested in hearing what do you think about the issue and if there are solid examples of successful businesses that offered free WiFi." If you were going to argue for or against this issue, what arguments would you use?

"A lot of proprietors seem to be concerned about the maintenance issue. Not so much about the hardware maintenance than software: auditing etc. Some are also concerned about legal ramifications if their customers are caught downloading music or movies illegally.

I am not aware of any Internet cafe or similar business that got hit by our beloved RIAA but what if their lawyers subpoena a small proprietor for download records? If you are running a shoestring infrastructure with a cable modem with an Airport base station what kind of logs could you possibly proviide? If a kid walks in for a lemonade and starts downloading porn what do you tell the parents when they sent their lawyer to pay you a visit?

It would seem that if you let a provider offer the WiFi service at your place of business for a fee, they can deal with liabilities, maintenance etc, so this is one less thing to worry about when setting up the business. Yet expecting your customers to pay $6-$10/hr for WiFi is so ridiculous and such a turn off for them."

Panera...

[garcia]

I was interested in hearing what do you think about the issue and if there are solid examples of successful businesses that offered free WiFi.

Panera [slashdot.org] has the largest (or one of) free wifi network out there.

Incresed buisnes outways the cost

[Ossus_10]

I have a friend who runs a bagel shop (coffee, sandwiches, bagels, etc...). He is moving to a larger location in order to provide free WiFi. The reason hes moving is because he experimented with WiFi before, and his old building was not big enough to accommodate all the extra buisness he recived when providing free WiFi. That to me sounds like a huge reason to provide free WiFi over paid. Ossus

Re:If it is going to be an "Internet Cafe"...

[ICLKennyG]

The cost.... a WAP - a good one at that costs less than $300 US... a single terminal is at least that much. And then there's the fact that there is only one... and you have to maintain them. Laptops abound, let them just bring them in and use them.
Additionally I would say if you could do an automatically generated access code for paying customers then it definatly would outwiegh paid WiFi in the long run. Just look at it as this...
$5/hr - maybe 300 people use it all month... $50/Day
1000 beverages a day 10cents each.. $100 day...

Re:Panera...

[Kolisar]

For what it is worth, a friend of mine does a lot of his business related work in Paneras in the area because of the free WiFi. He also spends a reasonable amount of money there as he is more likely to eat there since he is already there checking email, etc... And, so as to not feel guilty, if he is not there around meal time he will at least purchase a beverage. The free WiFi brings him there as opposed to going to StarBucks or other locations that charge for WiFi access.

Re:If it is going to be an "Internet Cafe"...

[EggyToast]

Free access to wired terminals means you need to support the hardware, maintain the hardware, and administer the hardware. If it's a cafe, that means you get to replace keyboards every week, as people spill on them.

Free wireless means you maintain just the router, which is generally a "turn on" situation. Everyone brings their own hardware.

I'd say that's a pretty huge difference.

ValuePoint has a neat feature for this

[zeet]

They have 'cafe accounts'. Basically it's X amount of free access per 24 hours. The first login is a redirect to whatever page you want, and with a little code fragment on there someone can turn on WiFi outside of the walled garden. Their default built-in page only works with IE but the code fragment is browser-agnostic.

Anyway, seems like a reasonable solution ... if people want to freeload, they can, just only for X amount of time per day. We're setting it up so that people can also sign up for full-day or full-month unlimited access at a reasonable rate. Put in your CC# on our walled garden server, set your username, get a password, and you've got instant access for however many days you bought.

Simple: Give him a WiFi AP

[ishmalius]

That's what I did. The local pub had business Internet access, but was totally neutral whether or not he provided wireless access to his customers. He just didn't want the headache of setting it up or running it. So I purchased a nice cheap 802.11g access point for about $45 from the web about 15 months ago. I just gave it to the pub owner. I set it up, gave it an easy-to-remember WEP code, and that was that. He has never needed to worry about it at all since then. I have had free access there for 15 months now, so that comes out to $3/month for me, and $0 for everyone else. With the occasional beer someone buys me in thanks, I have come out way ahead.

A way to implement this: Zyxel access point

[TurkishGeek]

Zyxel sells an access point designed for just this purpose: ZyAir B-4000. Much easier than implementing it yourself, unless there is already on Open Source solution based on NoCat or something similar.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1650238,00.as p [pcmag.com]

http://www.zyxel.com/product/model.php?indexcate=1 060053881&indexcate1=1085450334&indexFlagvalue=102 1876859 [zyxel.com]

Re:If it is going to be an "Internet Cafe"...

[MsGeek]

F/OSS solution for metered hotspots:

http://www.publicip.net/ [publicip.net]

Very cool.

Re:Excellent example, but a double-edged sword...

[anaesthetica]

A few months ago Tryst started a policy of not offering Wi-Fi on weekends, precisely because of freeloaders taking up all the sofa spots and being anti-social. They allow free wireless on weekdays because it helps them maintain volume through the weekdays, but on the weekend (when they're packed to the gills regardless) I think they'd rather have social (read: paying) customers instead.

However, Tryst is hands down the best hang-out coffee shop in the city, and perhaps even on the eastern seaboard.

Nice to see another DC /.er. Cheers!

Re:Panera...

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer my free wifi in bars. Goose Island in Chicago and Two Rows in the DFW Metropex are two great examples

And JT Whitney's in Madison, WI.

Re:$6-$10/hr?

[bitkid]

There are two linux-distros for the Linksys WRT54G that are meant to help with setting up hotspots:

EWRT Linux http://www.portless.net/menu/ewrt/ [portless.net] and the hotspot-zone project http://sourceforge.net/projects/hotspot-zone/ [sourceforge.net]. Both use nocat as the captive portal, the later offers radius authentication patches for nocat.

Re:I argued about increased business and royalty

[LordSnooty]

Making $3.50 per table every 2 hours will not keep them in business. It's all about getting drinks out the door.

MOD PARENT UP. Tha's the reason that the whole free wifi thing has struggled to take off in coffee-shop-type situs, except where a flat fee is paid or it's Starbucks, who can take the hit (maybe one Starbucks in a a locale goes wifi, so the overspill can be accomdated in the other 4 within 10 mins walking distance). Note I live in the UK. However we were promised an always-connected utopia.

Re:Panera...

[magarity]

Why do you need a company to set it up?
D-Link [dlink.com] has out of the box wireless access by fee/free/timer/whatever complete with a little printer that gives out a code to put in the gateway web page. A shop owner can give out a ticket for x minutes with a drink purchase or a few extra bucks or whatever scheme you think up. Just hook it up to a business DSL or cable and away you go.

Re:I argued about increased business and royalty

[MAdMaxOr]

That's why my favorite coffee shop has some couches and tables designated as study-free zones. If an employee walks by and you have a laptop or textbook out, you'll be kindly asked to move.

I think this works out well for everyone.

Re:World Cup

[meatball_mulligan]

World Cup has at least three locations:

• 18th & Glissan in NW
• EcoTrust in the Perl
• Powell's

They all offer free WiFi via Personal Telco and seem to be doing very well. It might be because they also have great coffee, a nice atmosphere, and friendly staff. It might be because almost every coffee shop in town other than Star*ucks offer free WiFi. I especially enjoy:

• all the World Cup shops (best coffee in town)
• Anna Banana's, NW 21st (kinda hippie, but nice)
• Coffee Time, NW 21st
• Sultan Cafe, NW 18th (hookahs!)
• Java Vivace, NW 23d (mmm, crepes)
• Stumptown, Downtown 3d & Oak (good coffee or beer!)
• Palio, Ladd's Addition (cool little neighborhood hangout)
• Fireside, SE Powell & 12th
• Sueña, Hollywood (though their tables & chairs suck)

Re:Leaches

[calzones]

If you are near a university, the students probably already have all the free broadband they need. Why would they come to your coffee shop just for free internet... unless: they want ambience and good food and beverages. The fact that you offer free WiFi makes you that much more attractive than the other coffee shops that don't. Besides, university kids will loiter in coffee shops for hours regardless of WiFi.

Starving artists? If they have a laptop, they can afford a cup of coffee. If they love you, they will buy many cups of coffee. If they can't afford the coffee, and people of this type somehow manage to comprise the majority of your clientele, then you picked a bad location. Free WiFi is not your problem.

If you are downtown or near a business park, business people will come in to get away from the office. They also have broadband at work, so no big deal there either, they are coming again for ambience and something to consume. These people generally have schedules to keep, so no fear of freeloaders here. They may bring clients to meet with, but that means more purchases and free advertising for you. Sounds like a win.

I don't know how much Starbucks makes from each T-mobile purchase, but when I used it once, I know I felt like I had paid my 11 bucks for the day and I was entitled to every last minute without having to buy anything from the shop. I sat next to an outlet for a large part of the day. This is because I was traveling and the hotel I was at had no internet access. So unless Starbucks gets a kickback from t-mobile, this can be counted as a potential loss. Had Starbucks been providing the access, I would have felt like buying something from them to support it.

Other random tidbits:

My netgear router let's me block specific websites.

If free WiFi loitering really does become a problem (meaning paying customers don't come anymore because non-paying customers are using up all the resources), post a sign that says 'no loitering; internet access, seating, and restrooms reserved for paying customers only; 1hr time limit.' Enforce it like any other food and drink establishment does: monitor the customers and gently ask them to leave if they aren't consuming anything.

If you were to turn off access for 20 minutes after every so often, people relying on the WiFi would be left with nothing to do for 20 minutes. They could buy something and wait, or leave. It would be pretty obvious who was there 'just for the WiFi' in that case.