One of the players in the commercial wi-fi market has already closed their doors. Cometa was not able to get enough investment money to continue with their plan of installing 20,000 wi-fi hotspots around the country.
Having internet access at a coffee shop or restaurant is a great idea, but I sure am not willing to pay the astronomical prices these companies want to charge for a subscription. Most of them cost as much as my high-speed connection at home. The only way I might be willing to pay for service is if I'm on vacation, and then I would only be buying a few days of service.
The other problem is the vast number of providers that have popped up. It seems that few places use the same provider, so unless you frequent a particular spot every day, you'd have to subscribe to more than one service to have true mobility.
I'll buy a subscription for mobile wi-fi service when one carrier has so many hotspots all through town that I'm guaranteed of getting a connection almost anywhere. Until then, look for more of these companies to disappear until the only ones standing are those with a strong business model.
I suspect that the wireless phone providers are the ones best positioned to succeed in this market.
Posted by geekchik at May 21, 2004 04:43 PMWho knows. We don't get to see T-Mobile since they don't release their numbers. I can only hope (since my company pays for T-Mobile and AT&T WiFi) that they both continue, but I would have to assume they have the same problems as Cometa did (only deeper pockets).
Posted by: James at May 23, 2004 08:19 AM