Starbucks Clashes With WiFi Hobbyists Over Airwaves 329
fobbman writes: "Portland Oregon's Pioneer Square (the heart of downtown) has had free WiFi access provided since February by Personal Telco, which is a local group of computer hobbyists. Now Starbuck's is planning on offering the same service on the same band in the same area for $29.95 a month, according to this story in the local fishwrap. Without regulation or licensing, and with WiFi growing, this could become a common problem."
Who was there first? (Score:3, Interesting)
Typical Starbucks (Score:3, Interesting)
Generally they buy out old coffee houses, or promise the landlord of these existing cafes higher rent. Get an entire area filled with starbucks, then once the area is associated with coffee, they start closing up their shops, until they only need one in the area.
So it's only logical that they would take the same approach with WiFi.
Re:WTF? (Score:3, Interesting)
Its amazing how many people (in the UK at least) treat the local Starbucks as their company's extra meeting room.
Breaker 192.168.0.19, breaker - breaker (Score:2, Interesting)
I wonder how long it will be before someone starts selling 100W 802.11 amplifiers
Problems with Unregulated (Score:3, Interesting)
I know that Big Brother is our enemy in Slashdot, but it's hard to do anything constructive in unregulated space. Imagine the chaos if FM wasn't regulated.
Re:Who was there first? (Score:5, Interesting)
Free vs. commercial shouldn't even enter into it. The real issue here is that companies are flooding a portion of the radio spectrum that has been set aside for general use and then clamouring for regulation after the fact in order to prop up their business model and turn "users" into "customers".
It's the commercial service that has to move along (Score:3, Interesting)
"These community-based wireless networks are wonderful, but these will never take the place of actual wireless systems deployed by carriers or companies such as T-Mobile," Ameri said.
They will exactly TAKE THE PLACE. What's left, is providing something special on that SHARED place. It will not take very long, when there's an international network of open gateways, and services that are provided commercially now (such as easiness to log-on anywhere you are). The share of the commercial companies will get smaller. IMHO, the commercial companies cannot provide much extra - they can do it first, but if it's useful these free services will adopt it.
Once they can license or otherwise guarantee the bandwidth, the situation changes. Like, if they can provide GPRS or some other means when the quality of the WiFi goes below certain limit (although I don't see any reasons why this could not be done by anyone else than the GPRS provider too) :)
(*note* this might be partly a troll, but I would still like to have comments on these :)
Re:802.11b supports overlapping networks (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, but the point of the story is that Starbucks (deliberately ?) chose to use the same frequency as the free guys.
And yes, the networks do manage to coexist, but with significant performance drops due to them sharing the same frequency.
SBUCKS is temporarily blocking the inevitable (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, Starbucks has gotten used to making a very, ahem - overly generous share of the profits for a beverage - what is it, something like 1200% gross margins? - so, now, they're just doing what comes natural, taking another market segment over in which they can jack us all up for the convenience of using our own property, our computers, while inside their location.
It will probably become the case that they will use some sort of technology to over-ride the ability of Personal Telco to provide free access anywhere near a Starbucks location. Then, those who want to even go near the place will be forced to pay Starbucks a damn subscription fee just to try and use what they once where able to use for free. Starbucks will, essentially, highjack the air in and near their retail locations.
So, seems to me that if everyone who was smart about this and committed to maintaining free access, they would cluster as many free access points around every Starbucks as they can.
Re:Legitimate concern or disguised marketing? (Score:2, Interesting)
I wouldn't go so far as to say that the news article was an intentional advertisement -- but it may serve as one nonetheless.
-Sou|cuttr
Well, it depends on how the regulations are writte (Score:3, Interesting)
No regulation means no monopolies, but so does 'good' regulation. The problem is all this 'deregulation' stuff isn't actually deregulation, but rather changing the regulations in order to let greedy people game the system for $$, usually at the expense of other people.
Does it matter? (Score:3, Interesting)
The company [comwavz.com] providing this service had constructed a rather large (several hundred feet large, dwarfing an AT&T microwave relay station a few hundred yards down the road from it) tower near my house.
I guess I should mention that the landscape around here is flat. Like a ruler. And completely devoid of obstructions.
I had no trouble at all getting 500 kBps downloads using the Aironet 350 AP and Pringles can-looking antenna they provided and installed from this massive tower 2.1 miles away.
The point of this text? They cover, probably with some degree of success, a very significant portion of Northwest Ohio with just ten of these towers.
Cell phones don't get that kind of range.
And even -handheld- cell phones are good for up to for 600mW of output (in the US, per FCC rules). The Aironet is about half of that.
Old-school bag phones had output of up to 3W. Which -might- have been as good as Comwavz -appears- to be doing with plain old 802.11b.
I never got rain fade, or snow fade, or any fade at all while I used it, even when conditions rendered visibility to zero. My microwave didn't phase it, and waving my 2.4GHz spread spectrum Uniden cordless phone directly in front of the antenna didn't make any measurable dent in latency. An arc welder used directly below the antenna didn't make a difference, either.
Things worked almost as well after an hour or two of sustained 50-70MPH winds kicked the loosely-mounted antenna so that it was at 90 degrees to the aforementioned towering wonder of bandwidth - the least efficient way I can imagine for that type of antenna to work.
I was able to also communicate -directly- with a few other of their customers. Those which I was able to identify were often several miles away, none with antennas pointed at mine (nor mine at theirs). Speeds were slow in this ad-hoc arrangement, sometimes in the range of 30kBps, but often were on par with my (current) 2Mbit cable modem.
I am led to wonder, thus, precisely what the problem is. It seems to be a remarkably durable way to communicate, and I have difficulty believing that Starbucks, of all places, can put a dent in anything controlled by people with motivation to make it continue working.
(I did have some downtime, once or twice, but each time that happened I was able to use binoculars to spot a guy wearing a toolbelt, jacking his way up that towering steel phalus. I attributed the temporary loss of bandwidth to safety of his (obviously brass) balls, not to any enviromental or interferance issues.)
Re:Does it matter? (Score:4, Interesting)
you get an insane loss of reliability and signal.
personaltelco would be fine with moving our AP to another channel, but we're loathe to establish a precendent.
Re:To those who've never been there.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh common. Starbucks is not going to be happy if someone is offering free wireless service that could undermine the Starbucks for-profit service. According to one of the posts above yours (and posted earlier), Starbucks knew there was already wireless equipment in the area, and they chose to ignore it. Sure, they're just trying to make a profit, and while "evil" is probably too strong a word, they are being jerks about it.
This has nothing to do with trying to wipe out another service like it, it's just geography, it's just a coincidence.
This has everything to do with trying to wipe out another service like it, of course it's geography, and it can't be coincidence if they were aware of the other service before they put in their own.
Re:To those who've never been there.. (Score:4, Interesting)
I see no problem with Starbucks wanting to offer a service. This isn't ham radio they are using, so they can certainly charge money for it. The issue is whether they should use the same channel as a previously existing service. Before they were aware of it, they could have planned to use a particular channel. But, a prudent planner would have checked to see what was active in the area by simply checking out the RF in the area using WiFi equipment.
But Starbucks/T-mobile knows about it now. So they have to decide whether they want to continue to share the channel and have degraded service and impose degraded service on others, or whether they move to another channel and have good service without bothering others (until there are more services than channels available to accomodate). Even if they decide to stay, I won't call Starbucks as evil, because channel sharing is inevitable. However, if they demand that others move off the channel, then they are evil. We'll see.
What the standard really says (Score:2, Interesting)
The confusion probably arises from the original 1 Mb/s IEEE 802.11 WLAN standard, which actually had three physical layers--Direct sequence spread spectrum (on the same channels as Wi-Fi), frequency hop spread spectrum (on 79 channels between 2402 and 2480 MHz in the U.S.), and infrared (IR).
The value in using Channel 1 for a direct sequence system is entirely due to the law of unintended consequences--most WLAN software does a simple channel scan from the bottom to the top of the band, and T-mobile wants to be discovered first. Had the software designers realized the built-in marketing advantage they were giving to Channel 1, and the ensuing free-for-all that would result, they might have randomized the search, to give all channels equal access.
Interesting how much economic effect can result from a computer language syntax feature like "ChanNum++".
Frequency coordination (Score:4, Interesting)
Second, he with the better license wins. Since 802.11b is FCC part 15 in a band that Hams occupy, get a licensed amateur to set up a station in that band, running max legal, and simply STOMP Starbucks out. Since a ham operates under FCC part 97, which trumps part 15, when Starbucks complains the ham can say "Sorry, but you have to ACCEPT all interference from my system - you are part 15, look at your license. Also, you are CAUSING interference in my system - stop immediately, as you are in violation of part 15."
While this sort of thing is frowned upon by the Amateur Radio Relay League, this may be what is needed to drive the message home to the companies that CASH does not make RIGHT.
Are you forgetting SSIDs? (Score:3, Interesting)
I set up something similar at work. We have 2 sets of wireless APs. One is for VMUs, (Vehicle Mounted Units) while the other is for laptops. Both are on channel 6 (had to be for other reasons) and both have different SSIDs. The laptops will not connect to the VMU APs, even if there is no signal from the Laptop APs. My Zaurus' Wireless card is set to "any" so it works on both of these networks, and will "hop" between them with no problems.
It's a matter of life or death . . . (Score:3, Interesting)
For the users of Personal Telco, anyway.
If it's true that Starbucks wants to capitalize on the presence of WiFi users in Pioneer Square and is doing so by jamming the incumbent channel (as well as degrading the access of their own users), Personal Telco's moving to a different channel may not help.
Starbucks could simply migrate their services or, more likely, establish presence on that channel as well. Starbucks, it would seem, is intent not on occupying Personal Telco's space as much as assimilating Personal Telco's users
No?
It seems to me (Score:1, Interesting)
I was almost sure that it was linked from here.
The jist (gist ?) of the essay was that the author would already frequent a coffee house that offered free internet access, and that was his preferred place to drink coffee anyway. Once, while he was in a Starbucks, he turned on his computer, and noticed this T-Mobile access, and that it was going to cost him 30/mo.
His question was, what were they offering for $30/mo, and why would he pay that instead of going to the mom and pop coffee house that gave the service away for free.
He also did some math to say that the service paid for itself if it brought in two extra cups of coffee a day or something like that.
Re:They're ALREADY stomping each other out (Score:3, Interesting)
You jam them off the air, accepting that you won't be able to use the frequency either. You then demonstrate to them that this is the classical Prisoner's Dilemma - if we both are nice, we both win. If we both are nasty, we both lose. If one is nasty and one is nice, nasty wins.
The long-term winning strategy is "Nice first, the whatever the other guy does." PT started out nice, Starbucks started out nasty. So PT goes REALLY nasty. If Starbucks goes nice (by moving to a different channel), then PT goes nice.
Of course, since PT is providing a better service than Starbucks, Starbuck's cannot win playing nice UNLESS they shift their paradigm - perhaps co-operating wit PT in this one area to provide better coverage (e.g. Starbucks pays PT for a share of their T1 bandwidth in exchange for allowing Starbucks users in. Sure, in that locatilty you can get in free, but in other areas you cannot - so if you are a traveler you are better off subscribing.)
This just goes to show the flaw in all business thinking now-a-days - everybody treats the world as a zero-sum game ("For me to win, others must lose") rather than looking for non-zero-sum solutions ("Here's how we can ALL win"). Starbucks could have easily made this a win-win situation ("We'll kick in for bandwidth, you let our customers in, but also let anybody else in too.").
Re:How does the community group pay for itself? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's donated by local ISPs. This is how all of the PersonalTelco sites in Portland are set up. The only exceptions are folks who set up a wireless node to share the bandwidth they pay for. And according to Adam Shand, one of the founders of PersonalTelco, the extra traffic acquired by doing this is negligible to the sharer.
However, PersonalTelco has taken the position that if your provider forbids sharing your connection, you shouldn't either. In other words, if you get your internet conenction from someone like AT&T Cable, you shouldn't set up a wireless node.
Everything PersonalTelco has been doing so far is on the up-&-up.
Geoff