People talk about free wifi being an attraction to the central city. Maybe. I know that when I am overseas, I trawl for free wifi. Starbucks or Maccas are always a good bet.
Here's an idea that may already exist. It might not exist, for good reason. Here it is anyway.
Have accessible wifi in the central precincts, but it doesn't need to be free.
When I am at home, I use wifi, and do my emails via xtra, Telecom's ISP in NZ. When I travel, I now have my laptop set up so that I can still send and receive email as if I am at home. I want to grow that idea to the wifi service itself.
When I am in the city centre, I want to be able to stop at a cafe and send an email, or trawl for something fascinating that can't wait. Why can't I use my xtra allocation? I have a few megs a month allocation, so why can't I access it when I am out and about? My laptop is set up to talk to my home wifi, and through to xtra. They keep track of how much I use.
Imagine that. Xtra customers can access their own allocation from in town. Not free. Something they are paying for. I should contact Telecom and suggest it.
But Wait! Why just Xtra customers? Why not Vodafone customers? Why not all broadband customers in the country?
Now THAT would be cool.
Have a wifi network set up to cover the entire central city, and then have it accessible to all broadband customers. If you aren't a customer, you could either become one for the duration, or you could purchase time, like other pay services.
Now that duration thing is an interesting idea.
When you hook in, and you don't have a customer number to access your own account, you could be given a selection of offers from the providers.
Vodafone might be offering 50megs for $5 within 7 days. Xtra could be offering 2Gigs for $40 for the month.
Choose the plan you want from any provider, and off you go. Go anywhere with wifi access in the central city within the timeframe chosen, and you are online. Similar to some mobile plans overseas.
Actually, that's such a good idea, it should not be limited to just the central city. How about any wifi anywhere in the country? Wow! A new business idea, perhaps?
Can I just take this idea to it's natural conclusion?
There are wifi modems everywhere. In many streets, every house has one. So why not spread this idea through the suburbs? If every modem has software that allows anybody to access their own broadband account from it, then things could be interesting. Obviously there would be firewalls to protect the owner's computer and data allocation. Also, there would be a 'pass-through' function to allow anybody else to use the access point to remotely connect to their own ISP and their own account.
Not long ago, when you wanted to connect to the internet, you were chained to the blue cable in your house.
Today, you are chained to the invisible boundary set by the range of your modem.
Maybe tomorrow, we can wifi our way around the country.
I wonder if wifi can roam...
No comments:
Post a Comment