Free Wi-Fi: Short-Circuits Common Sense

Internet goliath Google, in October, 2005, offered to provide the city of San Francisco with free wireless Internet (wi-fi). A month later, the city of New Orleans announced plans to become the nation's first major city to own and operate its own free wi-fi network (and then immediately scaled back those plans). Back in May, 2005, on a vastly smaller scale, the city of Tucson got a head start on free wi-fi thanks to the Tucson Wi-Fi Alliance, a nonprofit organization, and its leader, Alecia Miller.

Tucson's super-tiny free wi-fi territory features just two hot spots: Jacome Plaza in front of the Joel D. Valdez Main Library and Presidio Plaza outside City Hall. To use either zone, first you need a GameBoy, PDA, cell phone or laptop that's wireless enabled. Then just tell your equipment to find a connection, make a couple of choices and, to use a highly technical term, presto-chango , you are on the Internet, free.

Miller explains this initiative by saying, "To me, wi-fi should be free. Wi-fi is a necessity, an amenity for a city." Brad Feder, one of for-profit Simply Bits three partners, says simply, "Wi-fi is not free." Simply Bits donated the engineering to set up Tucson's free wi-fi hot spots and Simply Bits pays the tab for its maintenance and bandwidth.

Why?

Feder explains, "We wanted to show our support for Tucson and showcase our company's core service, which is wireless Internet access."

Elsewhere throughout Tucson, wi-fi is not, of course, "free." You can buy wi-fi access from SBC that's good at UPS stores, Barnes & Noble bookstores and elsewhere. T Mobile charges $39.95 for wi-fi that works at Starbucks throughout the USA (except in the Manchester, NH airport). Or consider Verizon, which offers wi-fi coverage on a far grander scale. Ted Doe, owner of Tucson's I Know Wireless, explains that Verizon's broadband access plans gives you wi-fi access with ($59/month) or without ($79) a separate Verizon cell phone account.

You just stick a card into an external slot on your notebook pc, install some software, and raise your antenna. Speeds vary. Unlike Phoenix, Tucson does not have high-speed access yet (think 2006). With Verizon's wi-fi, however, anywhere a Verizon cell phone works, you can get online, not just in Tucson, but on highways and in cities throughout the USA.. Now that's a huge geographic wi-fi network.

Doe says he has a pair of customers (husband and wife) who drove from Tucson to California and reported working on their notebook computer, online, the entire trip. Wi-fi's also a boon for businesses and residents in Tucson's northeast and far east, where Simply Bits offers Internet access to thousands who are otherwise stuck with an agonizingly slow dial-up connection to the Internet. Lesley Merrifield, Tucson Osteopathic Medical Foundation's Director of Communication, says, "I think all of us increasingly want to do some work from home, and Simply Bits Internet access has been great for me."

With all these private enterprise, not-free options, why would a city (or county) want to give away wi-fi?

Miller says that widespread free wi-fi would support economic growth and dramatically establish/reinforce Tucson's desired positioning as a high-tech city, but she has no recommendation for who would pay the bill. The cost would be a mega-whopper. Les Smith, GM of Timer Warner Telecom, and Feder's Simply Bits agree that "free" wi-fi in Great Tucson could run $50,000 - $100,000+ per square mile. With Greater Tucson measuring about 500 square miles, figure $25 - 50 Million just to light us up. Nobody knows the projected maintenance cost.

We do know a little bit about who the users of free wireless would include. Miller reports that Tucson's free wi-fi downtown include lawyers who dart out of courtrooms, step outside, and fire up their computers to get on the Net. Feder says that a couple of dozen users are on at any one time.

In the past year, we've seen proof that Tucsonans don't want to pay "extra" to have their trash picked up. So just try to imagine taxpayers forking over $50 million so that those of us who are wealthy enough to own a pda or a wireless notebook can get free Internet access.

Even if Google adopted Tucson instead of San Francisco, locally we'd have losers. Simply Bits might simply be acquired - or put out of business - and AOL, Qwest, Cox and Comcast would lose tens of thousands of customers.

There are still more questions, including this one: how could Google possibly afford to provide free wireless throughout San Francisco? Advertising may be the answer. That is, every time you logged on, you'd be treated to advertising. Now, if we could just figure out how to sell an extra $25-50 Million in online advertising here in Tucson, we could compete with New Orleans, right?

This article first appeared as a column written by Dave Tedlock, NetOutcomes' president, for Tucson Business Edge, a monthly magazine published by the daily newspaper, the Tucson Citizen.

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