Paris, The Wireless Wonder?
Yet another big WiFi project is being talked about. This one would cover the entire city of Paris by installing access points at every subway station. The group doing it seems to think they can put the whole system together for less than $10 million. Also interesting is that their business model seems more like Cometa’s than Boingo’s. They’re letting other service providers buy access to their network and resell it however they want. They’ve already signed up quite a few providers, and they think that the competition will keep the price quite low. If there really is ubiquitous coverage, then the idea of paying for WiFi might make more sense. Plus, they’re hoping that the different service providers offer different services on top of the WiFi (such as VPN access) to differentiate the various offerings. Should be interesting to see if this gets off the ground.
