Interview: Wireless co. — We’re a latte cheaper than Starbucks (The Villager)

Julie Shapiro interviewed me for an article she wrote in The Villager, a local NYC news-weekly titled Wireless co.: We’re a latte cheaper than Starbucks. The article talks about “FON” (about which I’ve written in the past) and their new plan to get people who live near Starbucks coffeeshops to install FON routers.

I talked to Julie about the fact that I’m very skeptical about FON’s plan, at least in New York City. First, for every coffeeshop in NYC, there’s maybe a couple of apartments that could offer competing coverage. And if the Starbucks is in a commercial building, the business on the 2nd floor isn’t going to install a FON router just to get the few dollars of revenue share that they might see.

Most of the FON hotspots Spiegel has seen in New York City are in the apartments of people who live above the first or second floors. Since wireless Internet travels only 100 to 150 feet indoors, “Only a handful of apartments are able to take advantage of the hotspots,” Spiegel said. “Everyone else in New York City has no advantage.”

While some Starbucks are located on the first floor of apartment buildings, others are in business buildings, surrounded by open lobbies with high ceilings, Spiegel said. In these cases, he doubts anyone will be able to take advantage of the FON promotion.

And of course, there’s the ISP acceptable usage policies, which make FON-type sharing illegal, unless you use an independent ISP or business-grade DSL connection:

Besides, Spiegel said, sharing one’s Internet service can be illegal. Internet service providers like Comcast and Time Warner do not allow consumers to resell their Internet connection — in fact, consumers aren’t even allowed to give the connection away for free. Smaller companies like Speakeasy and bway.net, on the other hand, allow consumers to profit from reselling.

Spiegel estimates that 99 percent of all Internet connections in the United States fall into the first category, making FON-style sharing illegal.

Plus, we believe that in public spaces and semi-public spaces, the internet should be free:

On Gothamist.com, a New York City Web site, a poster named “jg” wrote, “Gross. Make Internet free.”

While Spiegel and NYCwireless appreciate that FON educates the public about wireless Internet, he basically agrees.

“NYCwireless has as philosophy that in public spaces, Internet should be free,” Spiegel said. ”[FON has] a philosophy that you should be paying for the Internet in some way or another.”