The city council in Rio Rancho, New
Mexico is about to approve an initiative that will make wireless access to all of the city's 70,000
residents for free. It sounds good on the surface, but if you dig a little deeper, it's not such a great
deal.
The provider of the service, Azulstar Networks, originally offered users various levels of service at different pricing levels. Now, if the city council gives its approval to the measure, users can get access for free at a 100kbps download data rate. Here's the rub--you can only use the free service for 10 hours a month and have to pay $1.50 a minute fee for tech support, if you need it. So where is the value for users here? Ten hours a month?!? How many Internet users can limit themselves for 10 hours a day, much less a month?
Azulstar will still be offering advertising spots on the network portal page, so they're still going to make money on the deal. In addition, they will be making available service upgrades at much faster download speeds (400kbps to 1.5Mbps) at monthly fees ranging from $20 to $40. If you're a regular Internet user, what's the point of getting the free service?
In other words, it doesn't pay to get free wireless access in Rio Rancho.
1. The value of 10 hours a month at double the speed of average BEST 56k modem dial-up? consider the advantage when updating virus signatures, operating systems, other software alone... makes a $20 WiFi card a pretty good investment in my book *IF* the bandwidth is actually available and reliable...
Respectfully,
Mike C. Baker
Posted at 12:16AM on Mar 15th 2006 by Mike C. Baker