I had a very interesting lunch meeting today. Craig Plunkett of New York based CEDX is town with his family this week. Craig is a network whiz who has done quite a few Wi-Fi deployments. Craig is hip to all of the nitty gritty ins and outs of Wi-Fi hotspots - including the biggest issue of all. Just what is a viable hot spot business model? The answer - the hot spot business model is a tough one. Money definitely does not flow in.
His model is a very nice little "hot spot in a box" for $400-$500. The premise owner pays for backhaul bandwidth and gets 25% of revenues. The remaining 75% goes to Craig's company.
The big issue is usage. There just aren't enough geeks like me traveling around with their laptops. I personally am not sure how much that will change. Laptops just aren't easy like cell phones. I was all excited about Wi-Fi PDA's. But my experience with my Palm based Sony Clie wireless is not encouraging. Palm based Wi-Fi is definitely not ready for prime time. So, the only viable technology left is a cell phone that roams between 3G and Wi-Fi. But that technology is still in the development stage and it's my guess that it is probably eighteen months out from deployment.
Anyhoo, it was great fun visiting with Craig. He and his family are having a super time up here - even though our weather completely sucks. And guess how Craig found about me. Through my blog!!!! We had never met before. He just did a Google search on Alaska and Wi-Fi and voila - The Slat Rat Chronicles appeared. It just goes to show what small world the blogosphere really is.
8:19:31 PM 
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