[wplug] More on downtown WiFi

Patrick Wagstrom pwagstro at andrew.cmu.edu
Fri Sep 15 22:44:16 EDT 2006


On Fri, 2006-09-15 at 12:51 -0400, Jonathan S. Billings wrote:
> On 09/15/2006 12:28 PM, Ryan Moszynski wrote:
> > I'm guessing that the "free" service is ad supported.  I'm just
> > wondering how the ads are handled.
> 
> I was wondering the same thing!  Maybe there is a captive portal you
> must click through before being able to visit any arbitrary page?

I believe it's more like the schoolyard crack model.  The first hit (two
hours) are free, after that, pay us money.  For example, you start
working downtown at the non-existant trendy coffee shop with the cute
barristas.  You're making good progress on your work and then suddenly
Champ Kind appears on your screen and shouts "Whammy! Your two hours are
up!"  Now you've got decisions if you're the average folk, either leave
the trendy coffee shop, abandoning half of your orange mocha frappacuino
and the barristas to return to your basement studio apartment with a
roof that leaks from the upstairs neighbors toilet and your dialup
network connection, or pay the equivalent of another designer drink to
keep on working and hope that you can build up the courage to ask the
barrista without the nose ring to check out the new tapas place on the
south side when she gets off.

It's a simple value proposition.  Go home to dialup and a leaky roof, or
pay $8 for broadband and a date with the barrista.

--Patrick




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