Making WiFi pay

Glenn Fleishman hits the nail on the head with his analysis of how WiFi hotspot owners will make their money back - by selling coffee and hotel rooms to travellers who have come to expect the service as standard. It's the dreaded air conditioning scenario I wrote about back in March, which means that anyone hoping to make lots of money for charging consumers directly for WiFi internet access is going to have to think again. It still doesn't quite justify Forrester's alarmist warnings recently about WiFi being "the next dot.com crash" - players like BT will still end up winning, as they own the hotspot and the bandwidth. They get paid, either way.