On Jul 12, 2005, at 1:55 PM, Yury Gitman wrote:
Hey Folks,
So let me try to make the case for a wifi pizza box. [based on the
email thread titled " Any place in NYC or nearby to rent EVDO
PCMCIA ."]
The demand for this is already bubbling up on this list, and I'm
it's sure similar all over the country.
Imagine for a minute a "Magic PizzaBox." Call 1-800-Magic-
PizzaBox, and get wireless internet delivered to your location in
an hour. Events need this all the times for it's participants and/
or for it's organizers, farmers markets need it for the vendors
using credit card machines, and there are a lot more cases, look
around you. We want internet everywhere, even outside of our
homes, offices, and starbucks. Personal use is great, but lets
think for a bit about events that cost money to put on or events
in which money and goods are exchanged. They are among some of
the groups that would call 1-800-Magic-PizzaBox.
1) Market Will Eat it Up:
Upon calling a 1-800-Pizzabox an Access Point (in a pizzabox) with
an Evdo back-haul is delivered with a nerd that will help configure
some people's computers. If you want more bandwidth for your event
get 2-3 Pizzaboxes. We can argue about what people will pay, but
let the market decide. My guest is $50-200 a day, per box. This
is why they will happily pay this. B/c high-speed wireless from
Sprint or Verizon costs from $200-500 to setup and activate, once
all is said and done. And if you want to cancel the service after
say your one event, that will cost you too. Plus you need the
Access point technology, plus a trusty laptop to admin with, plus
some pretty unique expertise to actually make it all worked as
promised. Don't take it for granted b/c half the nycwirless list
could actually pull this off, it's still a pretty specialized skill.
You do the math, put your own numbers in, and I think you'll see
there is a business model here and the market will support it. But
it's important to note there are NO technological restrictions from
making a Magic PizzaBox. And (although it is left to be proven) NO
market restriction to this either.
Great idea!
2) Your Signature to the Devil Called Verizon and Sprint:
[I'm just kidding I love these guys, just some good 'ole teasing]
As Alex pointed out there is only ONE thing preventing anyone from
doing this. And that your signature on the terms of service one
signs with the highspeed wireless service provider. Before using
their futuristic high-tech service we must promise to the little
red man that we will not share with our friends or resale. Does
this sound familiar? It's like wanting to share a dsl or cable
modem with more then one apartment or person. The only thing
preventing a city of users from creating a bottom-up infrastructure
(like the one so celebrated in NYC) is this signature. As you can
see it's a deterrent, but not much of one. And in the meantime,
it's pretty amazing what new yorkers have done.
This is of course assuming that the EVDO cards have a data plan
from an American carrier (Verizon or Sprint). I'd like to know if
there are international carrier agreements for data between the CDMA
operators as in the GSM world (too bad we don't have a nationwide 3G
network in the US)? If so, it may be possible to get a data plan and
card from a carrier overseas - with a less restrictive user agreement
- that has a data roaming agreement with Verizon or Sprint.
3) What to do:
Verizon and Sprint are quite happy to sell each one of us highspeed
wireless for a small fortune for the rest of our lives. Other
services (WiMax) will come up and compete and drive the price
down. So I think that the Magic Pizzabox has a two or four year
window to be a whole lot of fun, very useful, and/or a money maker,
after that you have to change some things around. The one thing
preventing this is the condition under which Evdo is sold. I don't
know a way around this. But I've seen this kind of roadblock by-
passed a hundred times by the collective minds and efforts of
people who see a better alternative. Maybe one of us will figure
out a loop whole? Or someone could simply start providing the
PizzaBox delivery service, just doing it under the radar, and
taking the risk that they might get their service cut off it caught
[unlikely].
Yet another alternative is to manifest a BWay.net that provides
Evdo or a service like it. I don't know, I'm just trying to
clarify the problem here so we can think-of or offer solutions. Or
better yet, become the solution.
I think this may work with WiMax in some of the large metropolitan
cities as long as there's enough power to supply the current WiMax CPEs.
Cheers,
Yury G
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Regards,
Jose
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