Many Wi-Fi Hotspot providers have come and gone in the last 3 years. Mobilestar shut down in Sep 2001 after lighting up the first 300 Starbucks. Their assets were picked up by VoiceStream, which was subsequently acquired by Deutsche Telekom to form T-Mobile USA and resulted in the T-Mobile Hotspot service.
AirWave, an Idealab! incubated venture, had 30 hotspots that were sold to HereUare in early 2001 and rebranded Wi-Fi Metro. HereUare, a back-office Wi-Fi billing provider shut doors in mid 2002 and the Wi-Fi Metro network was picked up by IKANO and rebranded Hotspotzz. Joltage, not a hotspot operator per se, but more an access control software and hosted back-office service provider, wound down in late 2002. Sputnik, who entered the hotspot market with the intention of lighting up locations soon changed their model to WLAN security and still operate in that sector today. Working Wild Networks built a solid regional network of hotspots in Arizona and New Mexico, but quietly disappeared in mid 2003. Toshiba's hotspot venture, SurfHere, claimed "3,000" hotspots in September 2002. But by early 2004 they had only actually connected 120 of them in real locations. Having failed to gain the McDonald's contact, competing agains Cometa Networks and Wayport, they announced cessation of operations in the spring 2004 and a letter of intent to pass the SurfHere network over to Cometa. Cometa Networks, who had $40 million in VC funding from Intel, IBM, AT&T, 3M and Apex, came from nowhere in late 2002 claiming that they would have 20,000 hotspots up and running by end of 2003. By early 2004 they had 150 hotspots up and running, mainly in Washington not including their McDonald's trial locations. Although they were set to take over the Toshiba SurfHere network, they also lost out on the McDonald's deal and withing weeks announced a cessation of operations, claiming an inability to raise further funds. Without a doubt the Wi-Fi industry has been heavily reviewed, speculated upon, hyped and littered with casualties, some splendiferous in their burnout. Throughout all this though, some smaller independent hotspot operators have kept their heads low, their belt tight and continued to operate under a few simple assumptions: hotspots are a slow growth, low margin business. Success is bootstrapped. There is demand for commercial hotspots, but it is similar to the demand for Internet kiosks. It's not an easy business and it's not a goldmine. Survival requires patience and a certain amount of humility. We see a continuing trend towards lower cost hotspot access, mainly driven by the plethora of free access. But this trend is countered by the millions of new Wi-Fi enabled laptop owners entering the market each month. Whether this increase in demand for Wi-Fi access will counter the effects of price erosion remains to be seen. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2004 5:11 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [SOCALWUG] WiFi sales a challenge http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/business/articles/0623wifi23.ht ml
