If you want to examine wifi from an economist's point of view, I suggest you
think about the business model for commercial deployment of wifi. I'm
talking about wifi - the 802.11a, 802.11b, and 802.11g standards - and not
wimax, which is 802.16 metropolitan area standards.
There are two competing models for public hotspots. The first is to link up
with a service provider like T-Mobile and sell public wifi access at an
hourly, daily, or monthly rate. The service provider and the business both
make a direct profit from sale of the service.
The second is to provide the wifi service free. This model hopes to make
money by attracting new customers, and holding existing customers for longer
periods of time. The cost of providing the wifi might be recovered by adding
a few pennies to the cost of the services or goods (coffee, books,
whatever).
Both models have pros and cons. For example, the first model makes the cost
of wifi service much higher, because at least two entities have to make a
profit, which might slow the spread of wifi. The second model makes wifi
appear free, but it's not really, Costs still have to be recovered, and if
the wifi service doesn't increase other revenues, it's being operated at a
loss.
There is an emerging debate about which model works best, or whether both
work. And what about different customer bases? For example, some people
might be willing to pay for a wifi net with quality-of-services guarantees
to get good VOIP, or videoconferencing, but not willing to pay for basic net
browsing and email checking.
"tapone" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:uO2mc.38428$(E-Mail Removed)...
> Hi,
> my name is Gabriele Capomasi and i'm a universitary student at the
economics
> Roma 3 University.It's about my thesis,i wuold like to write it about
wi-fi
> and in particular if we are in presence of a new financial bubble ( like
for
> new economy at the beginning ) or not and if it has the potentiality to
> become a lucrative business.I'm looking for any suggestions,advice or
> anything that could help me.
> Bye
>
> Bye
>
>
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