The Death Of the Wireless Hotspot

spongebob

Singapore has decided not to waste money on Hotspots any more. Story on the Register with background.

Note that this does NOT bode ill for products such as the new Vapourificous IBB one.

Hotspots are crap because their range is so limited. If the IBB product took off then in theory all you do is plug it in near ANY IBB mast and you are provisioned, the Hotspot can move , so to speak.

The Government should close off any further investment in Hotspots and concentrate its funding on services that wish to provide a Universal Service in a Community rather than pandering to rugger buggers downloading pr0n in their hotels at their companies expense.

M

Capt'n Midnight

At a Dublin conference on WiFi one person there said that a DSL line and Access point in a Hotel cost about €5 per day (or whatever) a year to run. Fair enough - but the point was it costs more to clean the toilets - so they wern't going to bother charging ...

So WiFi should be seen as value added something to get people to choose your establisment over another, not something to make money on - because the costs of metering and billing and securing it cost so much more than providing the basic service...

Or another way of looking at it is - if they are charging €10 per hour - they would break even if they only got one customer per day...

mayhem#

So WiFi should be seen as value added something to get people to choose your establisment over another, not something to make money on - because the costs of metering and billing and securing it cost so much more than providing the basic service.... [/B]

Even though I make my money from Hotspots at the moment that is exactly my opinion...

E.

Señor Juárez

how many wireless hotspots are there in the city of dublin?

SkepticOne

I agree. The government should only fund projects that cater to homes and small businesses.

Why should the government fund hotspots when for a couple of hundred euros, you can set up your own hotspot? Why did they need to 'trial' hotspots in Ireland. They have been in use around the world for several years. You just buy the equipment and set it up.

Hotspots are not broadband, they are a means of sharing out a broadband connection once you have broadband.

What were they thinking?

Capt'n Midnight

If only - But I sure the Govt. has invested lots more than that !

The point is that you can get an internet connection whose terms and conditions allow you to share it and then pay a couple of hundred for WiFI gear.

The whole thing is cheaper than a maintainance contract on it - it's cheaper than any billing system that could charge for it - it's cheaper than any system that requires you to buy a physical token or to interact with a person... - it's cheaper than a vending machine ...

In commercial terms it should be a non starter - unless you are offering GB's per customer ...

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The only way I could see this working is a bit like the IOL mapping thing - you use your mobile to make a €1 call and you get texted back a password that will allow you in for an hour. -

Though I reckon any billing / security system would probably cost a large chunk of this per transaction...

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Think about it - if the stations cost €1,000 then €1M will get you 1,000 of them - which would cover most of the country..

Imagine if this technology came out back in the days of PnT and there was a political will to do it .. €10M would have got EVERY post office / sub post office in every village in the country wired up .... ( and the exchanges too / stategic telegraph poles) giving about 95% population access to a place where they could use their devices to connect to the internet...

==============================

Govn't could do something like this next month - install hotspots at every dept / building / CC office / museum etc. that has a fixed cost internet access - on a best endevour & out of hours basis,
- ie. no access during business hours / no cost = no SLA .

But it won't happen - the problems are not technical...

And as for security concerns - they should have been in place long ago in govt depts. (obviously you keep it outside the firewalls.)

spongebob

Story Here but this lot believe that Bluetooth will step in instead, nahhhhhh

Capt'n Midnight

"Wi-Fi is the superior technology over Bluetooth for public access," he said. "The range is greater--Bluetooth's is 10 meters, compared (with) 100 meters for Wi-Fi. The bandwidth is greater, and more users can use one access point at once...with Bluetooth, you are limited to seven," Platt explained.

The point with WiFi is interoperability - 802.11b works - and now that 802.11g has been ratified it should settle down too.

Bluetooth still has compatability issues.

Señor Juárez

well remember that if teh gov pay for this, there is also the problem of paying the fees for teh bandwidth. how much is bandwidth anyway, for an uncontented megabit from teh provider?

Gavin

Some of the bluetooth comments are incorrect, there isn't a limit of 7. 7 is the max amount for a piconet, but devices can be members of several piconets, or member of one and master of another.

Howinever, bluetooth is aimed at a completely different market really than wi-fi as I see it. the bluetooth PAN is a simple short range network for small devices to interact with small amounts of data transfer. Phones, pda's syncing appointment information type of thing. It's really not appropriate for hotspots

Gav

yossarin

I really believe that there's more to WiFi than just a last-mile technology for providing broadband to people.

Look at all of the location / context aware research going on, or the services that the DublinWAN are planning (v-over-ip, etc.). These are great ideas and completly new areas of computing that don't involve Internet access at all.

also, bluetooth is a wire-replacement technology. Its made for a completly different use than WiFi. Its like comparing apples and oranges people !

Capt'n Midnight

Just in case there is any confusion www.DublinWAN.org and indeed www.IrishWAN.org are building an IP network but are not directly providing services at present.

People on the WAN can of course share services and many do - for example teamspeak is a nice VOIP utility where several people can connect into the same server.

=========================================
BB less - WiFi

In theory you could use bus stops to send email - even when the buses and stops don't have LOS or BB connections - in the stop would be a small server - when the WiFi enabled bus arrives it uploads stuff from the stop. (ERTN etc.) - on the Bus you could browse the cache - OK the connection would be very intermittant and would only synch when the bus passed an Access point connected to Broadband or another bus.

Not really practicable - but you can see how you can use a bus to carry email from places without line of sight..

It could be extended perhaps - buses could pass email to each other - depending on which would pass an fixed BB connection first - Ok you'd have multiple copies of each email going via different routes - and on the local web server you would have a browsable cache of the more popular pages - news / local gov't / bus timetables etc.

So not BB, no BB connection - but you could request sites to be mirrored in the caches and emails could be sent and recieved on the buses...


BTW: on the DART this should be trivial
-or maybe IR sensors every 100m so you can still tx and rx while in motion

eth0_

Muck, I have to take issue with your implying the IBB ripwave service is vapor ware. For one, they installed the transmitters for the service on at least one of their masts last week for testing. Having looked at the Navini.com website, there's nothing there to suggest this is a rubbish service, and it works well where it has been rolled out.

Don't make the mistake of confusing Ripwave with traditional wi-fi networks, it is a microwave technology, not the same thing as a wireless network you'd have in the home. Ripwave will work over 5km fine.

spongebob

On the 05/06/03 i described non existent product as vapour, you chose to have a go at me nearly three weeks later. It was switched on in the past week eth0

As for this .../me carefully notes that it was posted early on Sunday morning.

Don't make the mistake of confusing Ripwave with traditional wi-fi networks, it is a microwave technology, not the same thing as a wireless network you'd have in the home. Ripwave will work over 5km fine.

Good party last night?

My reason for starting this thread was to point out that the chargeable wi-fi model is dying . This is the model that Eircom and O2 seem to be interested in, the government has wasted some money supporting their dubious endeavours I hope that they stop now.

The free hotspot and carrier grade broadband wireless have a great future, is that what you meant?

M

dahamsta

Originally posted by Muck
My reason for starting this thread was to point out that the chargeable wi-fi model is dying . This is the model that Eircom and O2 seem to be interested in, the government has wasted some money supporting their dubious endeavours I hope that they stop now.

Are you talking in particular about so-called hotspots or WiFi in general Muck? I'm not sure IO would agree with you on the latter...

Speaking of airplanes, I wonder what, if any, issues there are with using the term "WiFi" in a product offering. The term is trademarked, but I wonder how the trademark is applied.

adam /wanders to another topic on another board

antoinolachtnai

eth0:

What EIRP are they running the Ripwave at?

Surely wireless LAN is a microwave technology?

Señor Juárez

im on dublinwan, its a wonderful idea.
at the mo im on an isolated node unfortunately, gotta get more people onto it methinks.

quozl

Originally posted by eth0_

Don't make the mistake of confusing Ripwave with traditional wi-fi networks, it is a microwave technology, not the same thing as a wireless network you'd have in the home. Ripwave will work over 5km fine.

Home wireless networks are microwave networks. They're even in the exact same band, 2.4 gig (the ISM band). Which is why some people are worried about them polluting the spectrum and causing trouble to other users.

There also still hasn't been any sort of reply saying that they will be under the legal power limits. I honestly don't believe they will be even close to being. Not that they're the only WISP to misbehave like this.

Greg

As an amusing aside, the FCC guidelines say to maintain a minimum 1.5 metres distance from the base station. And this is supposedly going to put out no more power EIRP than your home access point.

antoinolachtnai

Well, strictly speaking it does give out a lot more than your home hotspot when it's used under the US rules.

What exactly is the advantage of the navini gear over a regular directional aerial? That's what I want to know.

Señor Juárez

apparently the base station is intelligent - that is to say, it knows where you are. it concentrates a narrow beam towards your location, reducing wastage by transmitting it in all directions

quozl

Originally posted by antoinolachtnai
Well, strictly speaking it does give out a lot more than your home hotspot when it's used under the US rules.

Yes, but thats in the US. Here they are required to follow EU regulations. The distances they are quoting are for US power levels which would suggest that they are using US power levels and ignoring european regulations. An official statement on this would be appreciated.

Greg