Digitalwall: Great Future of Wireless Broadband (1) Living in the WiFi City

Ubiquitous Access is what people really want.

[+] Living in the largest wireless broadband city in the world

Imagine this: you are living in a city where you can access the Internet through WiFi from 90% of the city area, where you can receive signals from access points whenever you turn on your notebook. Doesn't it sound great?

In early June of 2006, Taipei was awarded "Intelligent Community of the Year" by the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) of the World Teleport Association (WTA). In the meantime, the world's WiFi hotspot authority JiWire announced that Taipei's city WiFi network was the largest in the world.

While most other cities around the world are just beginning to build their city WiFi networks, the wireless access points in Taipei has already covered 90% of the city's population. It will take other cities at least one and a half to two years to keep up with the pace of Taipei.

Taipei city government does not pay a cent for the project. All the wireless access points in the city are built by outsource contractors, who are allowed to retrieve the return of their investments from follow-on service charges. Most other cities in the world also follow this model in designing their wireless city blueprints.

I bought my first notebook computer in September and was excited when I read the news. Thank God I am a citizen of this great city. I immediately applied for a NTD 400/month package, dreaming about the freedom of accessing the Internet anywhere, anytime.

[+] Real life and experience about the wireless city

The first problem I encountered was no signal available in my office, which was on the 8th floor (surprisingly, the office of the outsource contractor responsible for the access points deployment was at the 9th floor of the same building). Among the so many access points, which allegedly covered 90% of the population, none was detectable. Carrying my notebook, I walked down the stairs and finally got signals on the 4th floor.

Later, I learnt that, as the access points were installed on lamp posts, trees, and telegraph poles, it was natural that the signals were unavailable at high floors. Yet while I was able to access the Internet at the side facing the street on the 4th floor, the signals vanished again when I moved to the farther side of the same floor.

Already accustomed to the ubiquitous availability of mobile phone signals, I was surprised. As a consumer who spent NTD 400 each month on the service, I didn't feel it was normal that I should "cooperate" with the technical problems of contractors, and find a way to access the Internet myself.

Later I figure out that it'd better to use wireless networks precisely according to the instructions in the user manual offered by service providers: sitting right at Starbucks outlets below the second floor, beyond which, there's no guarantee for signal availability.

Many people would argue that nobody really carries a notebook computer and walk around, and being able to access the Internet from a cafe is good enough to meet most people's needs. They do not understand for sure that what consumers need is the freedom for ubiquitous access.

[+] Wide area wireless network is the future

Having experienced the setbacks of the public WiFi, I realize that the Wireless Wde Area Network (WWAN) is what consumers really desired. Trying to use WiFi, a technology designed for local areas originally, in wide areas and making patches here and there are just like to have a mall kid behind the steering wheel of a big car.

Please note the word I used: desire. Now that the Internet is already an integral part of people's life, they will not tolerate such a defective wireless Internet service, on which they spend money.

I also think about applying for the 3G wireless Internet service, which has been available in Taiwan for many years. Plug a 3G wireless PC card, which you can get from any telecom operator at an affordable price into your notebook and you will be able to surf the Internet. What holds me back is that the cost for the monthly package is twice as much as the amount of a public WiFi package.

For 3G telecom operators, that is a right pricing strategy. Although in theory, the speed of the WCDMA technology is only 384k, far slower than that of WiFi, the signals are ubiquitously available. I once tried the 3G link on a highway and did not encounter any single disconnection for two hours.

Due to the wide signal coverage, the service with a much slower data rate can be sold at a higher price. I finally realize that the ubiquitous access is what people really wanted. Consumers are willing to pay for additional freedom, but the public WiFi is facing severe challenges from other WWAN technologies.

[+] Too few subscribers

Despite the alleged 90% population coverage, Taipei, the so called "the largest WiFi city in the world", has as few as 40,000 subscribers for its WiFi service. For contractors who have spent so much time and money on the construction of wireless access points, the miserable income is pushing the day of profitability even farther beyond the horizon.

Many discussions are focused on the high service fee, which has diminished the infiltration rate of the service. However, compared with the fee rate of local ADSL, WiFi is not really expensive. There are also arguments that, due to the scarcity of wireless applications, consumers have little interest in it.

Both arguments, however, only touch the surface of the problem. The real problem is not the slow increase in the number of WiFi subscribers, but our over high expectation, which has led to the wrong market positioning, and all those follow-on problems. (
2006/11/12 - By Digitalwall.com - Way to
China Internet/Telecom )