I had a pleasant suprise

I had a pleasant suprise this morning when I received an email from Guy Mortenson, who I used to work with at Plus for a while. Guy's since gone on to bigger and better things, working as a Solutions Engineer at egg.com, and in his spare time he's the chair for the UKOUG Development Engineering SIG.

Guy pointed out to me the website for piertopier.net, a community project in Brighton who are offering free WiFi (IEEE 802.11b) internet access on Brighton Beach. They're a volunteer service relying on donations, using open-source and community networking technologies to provide their infrastructure, and with internet connectivity provided by Moving-Edge, a local ISP. They've already got quite a bit of publicity and I'll certainly be trying it out in the near future.

In all honesty, this, together with the 'free internet access when you buy a cappucino' approach, seems to be the most viable way public WIFI access will be provided as time goes by. Many organisations are investing in public access points, but are pricing them for users at a comparable cost to making a mobile phone call, leading to low take up and a predicted 'dot.com' style decline in the market.

Unless pricing is brought down to the level of a few pounds per hour (as with internet cafes, and in this instance there isn't even the premises or terminals to pay for), and with an easy way to purchase 'airtime' that works for all hotspots around the country, public WIFI access will only be sustainable when it's being given away by volunteers, or as an incentive to use their premises.