Wi-Fi And Free Lunches
Nothing all that new, but still an interesting column from a former VP at IBM who suddenly has realized that public WiFi access is a big deal. He repeats a lot of stuff that people were saying a year ago, so he’s a little late to the party. However, he does mention that he believes that sometime soon, people will demand ubiquitous WiFi access in downtown areas, the same way they expect the city to provide streetlights (which leads me to suggest, obviously, that cities should just put up access points on their streetlamps…). He also worries about the issue of “theft” of internet services, but I think people are making a much bigger deal of this than they should. Part of the reason WiFi is taking off so much is because it’s made it easier for people to access the internet from so many places. It’s sad that everyone wants to add as many tollbooths as possible to this process – because that is only going to slow down adoption rates, and make it more difficult to build a really useful service.
