Sunday, July 27, 2003

New customer = profit? Like I said, give me free WiFi and I'll buy your fricking coffee and biscotti. Make me  pay for the WiFi, I won't even come into your store. Simple. WiFi is too expensive when it's not free. Operating a WiFi hotspot that you charge money for costs $30 a day. Operating a free WiFi hotspot costs $6. Clearing $6/day in new profit from offering free WiFi is easy, clearing $30 a day in most locations is damned hard. Will more cafes do the math? Here's the irony in Wi-Fi public access pricing: retailers can be profitable by offering free Wi-Fi as a customer acquisition tool. But when they charge for Wi-Fi access, these retailers, and the WISPs serving them, almost certainly lose money. According to a market study coming out this summer, retailers are quickly learning this lesson: up to 30% of US location owners who plan to deploy commercial hotspots in 2004 intend those hotspots to be free or free-with-purchase. Link Discuss (via WiFi Networking News) [Boing Boing Blog] 6:54:47 PM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

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