I was pleasantly surprised to find Wi-Fi on BART today in San Francisco. See "WiFi trial comes to San Francisco's BART trains"
"Wi-Fi Rail Tests WiFi On San Francisco Subway"
"Firm tests Wi-Fi on moving San Francisco trains"
"Free WiFi on BART's Beta Network"
WiFi Rail home page
Registration is free during the beta. No idea how long it will last.
It's a non-starter, as far as I'm concerned. They claim their fee is $10 for a "day pass". If you might use BART occassionally, the cost is astronomical for what you get. If you have to pay that for every nickle and dime operation out there, you'd go broke.
Even with a monthly pass, these guys want $30 per month. If you use Starbucks, those guys want close to $30 per month.
It's like going through a jungle full of leeches.
On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 06:29:53 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@nospam.pacbell.net (Bill Z.) wrote in :
Did you miss the currently FREE part? ;)
On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 03:39:07 GMT, John Navas wrote in :
Heading toward Millbrae from Embarcadero this morning, I had usable Wi-Fi to Civic Center (4 stations), but not beyond that point.
Wi-Fi access points are in stations and tunnels, not on trains.
John Navas hath wroth:
There's no such thing as a free launch.
(Sorry. I couldn't resist).
Wonder if iPass will add BART to their list of connections? Starbucks MacDonalds, etc, are already on it.
On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 11:33:35 -0800, Jeff Liebermann wrote in :
Bad, really really bad! LOL
It's currently free as a promotional gimmick. My guess is that it won't be free for long. :-(
No idea, but we have coffee shops in town with free Wi-Fi. It draws in enough customers that they make more in sales than it costs to run the service, which just consists of a wifi router connected to the shop's DSL or Cable connection. If you need it anyway (e.g., for placing orders on-line) the marginal cost of letting customers use it is nearly zero.
On 13 Feb 2008 16:37:03 -0800, snipped-for-privacy@nospam.pacbell.net (Bill Z.) wrote in :
It's apparently been free for several months. (I only just learned of it.) Regardless, why would you care? When it stops being free, move on.
On 13 Feb 2008 16:42:45 -0800, snipped-for-privacy@nospam.pacbell.net (Bill Z.) wrote in :
Actually not zero, because it takes a fair amount of expertise to set it up and keep it running reliably. Those who cheap out risk alienating the very customers they are trying to keep.
Actually I said, "nearly zero". I think they just use consumer-level products. Setup is easy - it is just what you do at home. It's a coffee shop with a single relatively small room, so you just need a single router. The level of service is fine for browsing web sites and checking email. But that's really all most people need. They get some coffee in the morning and handle some work-related tasks before driving into work so they don't sit in traffic during the worst part of the commute. You aren't going to download videos or listen to music - the level of background noise is too high.
Well, one reason to care is that sales taxes help pay for BART. A no-hassle use of an internet connection while riding BART might help increase usage and reduce the subsidy BART needs.
BART is institutionally too stupid to make good financial decisions. An example is the parking charge they've introduced - all day long in Daly City. While they fill up early in the morning, people start to leave faster than they arrive in the afternoon, at which point the trains going into San Francisco are nearly empty. That's when you want to make parking free - to attract more people in the afternoon when the lot is not heavily utilized.
I got pissed off enough at the charge that I no longer use BART to get into San Francisco - the extra charge was enough to make driving a more attractive option. It wasn't just the cost - paying was a pain in the neck. You had to remember your stall number, buy the ticket, go through the gate, and only *then* enter the number. Invariably, by the time I had finished fooling around with the ticket machine, I'd forget the number and have to walk back to my car to find it again. Letting you enter the number when you got your ticket and having it activated when you put your card into the reader at the gate was beyond them.
On Thu, 14 Feb 2008 01:43:04 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@nospam.pacbell.net (Bill Z.) wrote in :
Not even close.
That's cheap and foolish. Proper configuration of a robust router is non-trivial.
File sharing is in fact a real problem.
No, quite accurate.
This is a coffee shop with 2 to 3 employees and a capacity of maybe 30 people, only a fraction of whom bring laptops along. The users are a responsible group of people.
Not there. It may surprise you, but people are not having a problem.
And you base this on what numbers? I've always been skeptical of the claim it adds business. Put up tables and wif and people stay longer. I can't imagine they're buying anywhere near the same amount of product (or generating the same profits) as a walk-in/walk-out customers. I'm sure there's something to be said for it's abilility to create a certain atmosphere. But at the end of the day if you're not making money then it'll fail no matter how quaint, charming or technically connected it might be.
The numbers are the number of people in this place, which is pretty much at capacity in the morning. There are plenty of walk-in/walk-out customers too, and they'll sell some pastries and cooked breakfasts as well. There are a number of tables, and quite a few people chatting, working on their laptops, etc. Some probably just browse some news sites or handle some email while eating.
A Starbucks a short walk away gets relatively little business in comparision. Given a choice between the two places, if I needed Internet access (e.g., to check my mail), Starbucks would lose, and Starbucks' charges for Wi-Fi are a signficant factor.
Those aren't numbers, at least not in the proft and loss sense. I'm not arguing against the advantages as a customer to having free wifi or it's ability to improve the customer's perception of the atmosphere. I'm simply questioning the notion of that being a cost-effective means to increase the bottom line, demonstrated with REAL DOLLAR FIGURES.
Starbucks, and any other sort of chain, often fail for failing to cultivate a community among the customers. Some places work great for the get-in/get-out anonymous crowd. But plenty of small independent businesses exist because they seek to provide a service level well above that level. The trick is in doing that while not going broke, much harder to accomplish.
-Bill Kearney
We have a Dairy Queen in town that just installed a free and totally open hotspot. They remodeled the place and on their marque outside it says..."Come see our new bathrooms"
On a DQ and only in Texas.
The point being, what, "The Only Clean Bathrooms in Town" or something? Just curious...
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