Speaking of WiFi, there are places where you can get it on the train.
A few of us looked deeply into this for commuter trains in the Northeast corridor. Most of the smaller runs lack space to effectively use a laptop, but the high speed trains that connection Boston, NYC and Washington D.C. were fine candidates.
Another interesting WiFi announcement comes from the upscale Omni hotel chain - free WiFi for guests.
I'm involved with a few wireless community networks and have been following their growth along with commercial growth since this started. It strikes me that the market will move towards paid WiFi only where people have very constrained choices and their business is paying for the service (airport lounges, some hotels). The great expansion will come from the recognition that this is a good way to attract business where people have idle time - laundromats, coffee shops, bookstores, auto repair shops, etc.
At this point installing it is a good ad and there are cases of shops showing a large increase in business .. a laundromat in Tempe, AZ saw a greater than two hundred percent increase in business with zero advertising and coffee shops with free WiFi are taking customers from Starbucks where a paid service is offered. Communities like Long Beach are installing it in their business districts to attract customers.
Initially businesses will install it to gain business and, at some point, it will be necessary - just like cleaning the shop windows, paying for interior design and other secondary features that attract and keep a good customer trade.
The metered services counter that they offer a superior product. People who are testing services indicate this just isn't the case. Many of the freenets offer better net with less hassle and the sponsornets have it in their best interest to offer a quality link.
A few ISPs are beginning to sense a market to the local merchant rather than the moving end user - at least one DSL and cable provider are offering or trialing inexpensive shop oriented services.
For some users security is a real issue, but this is between them and their MIS department rather than the service provider. These guys need to be using a virtual private network, but that is a different issue (assuming the wireless base station can pass this kind of traffic).
Outside of the constrained areas where people lack choice, I do not believe a case can be made for metered WiFi and wonder if the people who are working the business models are refugees from the dotbomb era.
The sticky wicket, of course, is what happens when services start stepping on top of each other? There isn't much in the way of total channel space here. This was a big issue in the early days and some in the FCC advocated an approach where simple allocation would be allowed. We are already seeing problems in some urban areas and it will only get worse.
Adding to the spectrum seems to make sense, but the Bells are ready to fight this tooth and claw and have started the fight.
6:23:49 AM 
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