WiFi - where will it all end

I want my bandwidth

In a previous life I worked for one of the world's largest telecoms companies, forever referred to as 'Telecom X'. It was while in one of the various roles I had there that I became involved in the wonderful world of WiFi hotspots. It was seen as a great idea by a few of the grand fromage of Telecom X and would be a key revenue opportunity and take the brand into new and exciting places etc. etc. There were a few dissenting voices naturally, along the lines of 'WiFi is crap' and 'WiFi is insecure but the power of corporate ego drove it through and today its one of the many internationally recognised WiFi hotspot services, available to anyone with a bit of cash and laptop. Great, wonderful, everyone is happy right? Well no, not happy actually.

You see there is a growing view among the bandwidth consumers of the world that WiFi should essentially be free - or at last free at the point of delivery. Exhibit 1 is Fon www.fon.com, the self proclaimed 'largest community WiFi network in the world' A grand title to be sure, interestingly its backed by some of the best known names of the Internet age, Skype and Google among them.

At my local pub you can get free WiFi with your burger and pint of beer, walk around any major city in the world and the public at large often have open networks just waiting for people to make better use of - how very kind of them but its sporadic at best, unreliable and the experience is inconsistent.

Naive consumers and generous landlords aside, why has Skype, Google and chums put 30Million USD into giving WiFi away for free to the world? It does not take a genius to see why and if I was Vodafone, T-Mobile, Cingular or any other major mobile operator I would be paying very careful attention to a little startup from Spain with some very ambitious friends.

Free (at the point of delivery) WiFi, free communications. Sign me up.

The Hub.