Scottsdale downtown Wi-Fi service shuts down
Wildfire Broadband appears to have shut down its Wi-Fi service in downtown Scottsdale (Arizona). According to the East Valley Tribune, “the paid service meant to capitalize on flashy new downtown projects and an influx of new residents had to compete with free Wi-Fi service that has become increasingly commonplace at coffee shops, restaurants and hotels.”
It’s hard to make an outdoor Wi-Fi service hugely profitable. First, you need a lot of people using the service for a long enough time that they will pay for it. If they are only going to check their email for 10 minutes, it’s unlikely they’ll pay. They will just go into a cafe with free Wi-Fi and do it there. Second, who is going to sit outside in the hot sun working on their laptop (unless they are under a tree)? This would work for people wandering around with iPhones but downtown Scottsdale is probably not a place where there are a lot of iPhone users wandering around checking Google maps, doing online searches. If the ISP makes it hard for these small devices to log on, then they won’t. ISPs need to design their services so that iPhone and iPod Touch users, as well as users of Wi-Fi enabled mobile phones such as the Nokia N95, have an easy time logging on.
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