Admittedly, I need to read up more on HS2.0 before I start asking too many questions.

Daniel

The general ease you mentioned is the reason why see people using PEAP, I think. Completely agree that it can be easy, and that it can be made to work if you have multiple levels of authentication and authorization. Definitely.

I'm curious, what kind of experience have you had with Windows 7 auto-configuring itself? I've found that it is a bit unpredictable. It's great when it works but the 20% of the time that it chooses the wrong settings the end-users are left calling helpdesk. Maybe it's just a few corner cases that I've run into?

Anyway, thanks again for dropping in and sharing your thoughts.

Daniel

Just my 00 cents [we did away with pennies so I had to round down]

Just my two cents, for what it's worth.

Thanks for joining the discussion. It's great to get some perspective from the other side of coin. I like the idea of having varying degrees of 'free' based on location and use case. Very cool concept.

Keith,

Sorry, I missed your last comment. I know we finished our debate on Twitter but I'll summarize my response here as well.

In short, I'm not saying that I think everyone should be trying to make money off of public Wi-Fi. While I think your mantra is a nice romantic sentiment, I don't see that it fits into what I am seeing in the real world. While organizations don't need to try and profit from public Wi-Fi, I just can 't see how it is viable for them not to try and recoup the cost and at least try and break even some how.

That being said, we live in a capitalist culture, so again, while it would be nice for all public Wi-Fi to be free I just don't see a reality where that will ever be the case. Whether it's money, or information, organizations will try to get something out of it.

Quite honestly, I believe that if organizations could find a way to profit from bathrooms they would. In fact, lot's already to recoup some costs by selling advertising space right above the urinals. In that case, you are paying to use the urinal with your attention to their advertising.

Interesting discussion but I guess we will have to just agree to disagree on this particular point.

Dan

(see all the lost revenues from phone 'profits' in the past...)

Ironically, some of the best hotel Wi-Fi I've ever experienced has been at the cheaper hotels with truly 'free' Wi-Fi... yet the more expensive the hotel, the worse the Wi-Fi experience.

It's all about expectations. End users (customers) expect Fast, Free, Easy Wi-Fi... and they should. It's the business managers who need to change from a profit center to a cost center mentality. It hasn't helped that a lot of Wi-Fi vendors try to sell to the business managers by telling them they can recover their costs in various nefarious ways.

Tell the business folks the truth, and you'll still get the sale. Real Estate properties NEED to deliver this service to maintain parity, especially in hospitality situations.

Coming from the hospitality industry, I'm firmly entrenched in these discussions everyday.

Hotel guests are of the opinion that free wireless internet access is a must, a basic staple, similar to the common bathroom amenities provided. I'm not saying I agree or disagree but that's just the perception and it's backed by industry research. Hotel owners/operators struggle with providing the service just due to the cost of implementing such a network properly. In the short term, if the project sponsor can get over the initial CAPEX hit, free wireless internet is a success. In the long term though, I feel it will never work. The continuous rise of OPEX for circuits alone is usually enough to stop free service dead in its tracks. From personal experience I've also noticed that if it's free, the quality of the network is suffering. Whether that be because somebody decided to spring SOHO devices all over the place, or hotels running on gear that has been EoL for years.

All that said, our brand falls under the "free" banner. Lobbies are completely free, no captive portals, analytics, or time-constraints. Guest floors come w/ captive portals and analytics but at no obvious monetary charge. The only area we charge for internet is in meeting space and ballrooms and usually that's because we're offering a different level of service, HD Wi-Fi with dedicated bandwidth SLA's. I don't think we've found the sweet spot just yet as we still battle with the issue everyday so it's refreshing to see outsider opinion.

Keep up the great work, it's nice to see a fellow GTA'er puttting himself out there on the frontlines.

Andy

Yep, you got my sentiment and I'm glad you agree. I just don't like the word free as much as I used to ;)

Also, I was actually thinking the same think about the Peter Griffin image but I got lazy. Poor form, I know...