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Somerville experiment could alter the WiFi game
WiFi activist Michael Oh has an unusual way of thinking about the most hyped new consumer technology since the Web. ”It’s kind of like air conditioning,” he said.
By D.C. Denison, Boston Globe Staff
”Retail outlets don’t charge you for air conditioning, or the milk you put in your coffee,” he said. ”Someday they aren’t going to charge you for WiFi.”
That day may be coming sooner than expected if a cluster of merchants in Davis Square, Somerville, sign onto a concept that’s being floated by Oh and Patrick J. McCormick, the chief information officer for the City of Somerville.
The two are calling the idea ”urban hot zones.”
Such a zone, as conceived by Oh, is an expansion of the WiFi ”hot spot” idea. A hot spot typically provides Internet access to an area of up to 300 feet in radius around an inexpensive antenna connected to a high speed Internet connection.
A hot zone pumps up that idea by using a network of antennas to offer Internet access to an entire geographic cluster of retail outlets and businesses. This differs from other public wireless networks because it doesn’t require each location to provide an Internet connection. In a hot zone each location is close enough to the central antenna to feed off a single high-speed line.
Because a number of firms share the line, the cost that each assumes is dramatically reduced. Areas around these participating companies also benefit from the free WiFi signal, which spills over into the surrounding area. In Oh’s vision, any street that has from 5 to 10 retail locations within a half-mile stretch can host a hot zone. He imagines that the typical city zone will include a mix of retail outlets, such as coffee shops and bars, along with neighborhood ”sponsors” like insurance companies.
”The budget numbers we’ve been running bring the average cost down to around $30 a month per merchant,” Oh said. That price point has attracted significant interest in Davis Square. Oh and McCormick have been meeting with Davis Square businesses and predict they may have a core starter group within months.
Oh already has some experience with the concept. Over the last few years he’s been building a prototype on Newbury Street, NewburyOpen.net, starting with the blocks surrounding his Apple Macintosh technology consulting service, Tech Superpowers. A central antenna in his company’s office on the block between Fairfield and Gloucester streets and a series of inexpensive antennas tie together local businesses up and down the street. NewburyOpen.net now offers free wireless Internet access to eight ”nodes” on Newbury Street, including the Armani Cafe and the Trident Booksellers & Cafe.
Significantly, although the concept is catching on, Oh does not see it as a business.
”The technology is so cheap, it’s really not worth building a business on,” he said.
Instead, Oh uses NewburyOpen.net as a community builder and marketing vehicle. That’s the model he hopes to replicate in Davis Square and in urban neighborhoods all over the world.
McCormick, the Somerville official who has been working with Oh on the concept, has different motivations.
”For us WiFi is not only a way to give more citizens access, it’s an economic development tool,” he said. ”If our coffee shops have WiFi, that may be enough to keep members of the community from having to go elsewhere for their access, or their coffee.”
McCormick said that Davis Square’s hot zone would automatically spill over to include, at no charge to the city, three local parks.
Eventually, McCormick said, he’d like to extend the concept to other Somerville neighborhoods, such as Union Square.
”The idea is that, when possible, WiFi should be free,” McCormick said.
This is not good news for the many ventures that have been trying mightily to build businesses around providing WiFi access. AT&T, IBM, and Intel, for example, have launched a company called Cometa Networks to build up to 15,000 WiFi hot spots by next year. T-Mobile, the nation’s sixth-largest wireless phone provider, has built out a network of more than 2,400 WiFi hot spots nationally, including deployments in Starbucks coffee shops, Borders bookstores, and other public locations. T-Mobile sells unlimited WiFi access for $20 a month to customers buying wireless phone service.
Oh and McCormick’s hot zones, however, could change the game in a significant way. Not only are they providing consumers with a free alternative to the various pay plans, they are clearly helping to set the stage for a time when WiFi is ubiquitous, particularly in urban neighborhoods.
Oh’s advice for fledging WiFi entrepreneurs: Assume WiFi will be there, and build your business on top it. Asked to elaborate, he mentions the emerging capacity to use handheld devices, such as personal digital assistants, to tie into the Internet from almost anywhere via WiFi.
”When bandwidth is much cheaper, even free, that’s when the power of the Internet can be fully realized,” he said. ”People will focus more on the applications and services and less on the technology and access.”
For Somerville’s McCormick, it’s barely a technology issue at all — an attitude that may send many WiFi access businesses back to the drawing board.
”It’s a quality-of-life issue,” he said. ”Eventually, WiFi is just going to be another layer to the urban village.”
D.C. Denison can be reached at [email protected].
This story ran on page D2 of the Boston Globe on 8/10/2003.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
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