Q, I know what the deployment cost is. There's a running network in downtown Auckland which will act as a template for expansion. The costs of installing it are well known [to the company]. It seems cheap enough to me. It's a lot cheaper than Tarken and I could build out a CDMA2000 network for central Auckland.
I doubt that suburban coverage would be economic for WiFi, but maybe it will be as costs continue to plummet. There's no town planning, resource consent, objections, legal costs or civil engineering which are real problems for cellphone towers, not to mention the cost of those aspects.
So coverage isn't a question.
What matters is demand. That IS a question. It might be enormous, justifying extensive networks in a short time, or it might be a slow build, requiring hot zones and only a gradual infill of other areas.
The nice thing about RoamAD is that a square kilometre of high demand area could be built out, covering say a university or downtown area, and as demand builds, it could be extended. Unlike a cellphone network, it doesn't need to be all built out with extensive coverage straight away. The most dramatic example of buildout all at once is Globalstar. The whole constellation had to be launched before the system could be used.
The rate of demand growth will be a function primarily of how quickly iPAQ type devices h10010.www1.hp.com come down in price to somewhere in the realm of the mob and how quickly WiFi is built into the likes of the pdQ or Kyocera 7135 or Anita™. Also, how much demand there is for the Microsoft Tablet and the like, the Centrino from Intel and so on.
It's not just Rob who shares my belief on deployment cost.
Don't worry about hotel charges. A hotel wouldn't even get to charge the subscriber. The sneaky little WiFi signals would just permeate the building whether they like it or not. Unless they screen the building for RF, which is unlikely. Who would want to stay at a hotel where they can't use their WiFi service?
I won't buy a house now without ADSL or fibre on tap. That was my first question when moving house in Y2K. If it wasn't fast, I didn't want to look at the house.
With RoamAD, it won't matter if the lady at the counter knows about WiFi or not. But I expect she'll soon know about it.
Mqurice |
