Bell Canada Turns Payphones into Public Hotspots 262
turing0 writes "Bell Canada yesterday announced a trial of a new public wifi hotspot service - currently free - with locations in either airports, railway stations or bus terminals in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Kingston. Bell has adopted an interesting twist on the hotspot in that they have built a steel armored case, in which to house the AP, a DSL modem and power supply, which is the exact dimensions of a payphone -- and mounted the whole thing in place of a single phone where there are banks of them such as you see in airports and bus terminals or subways. According to this article in the Globe and Mail Bell has still not determined the pricing model."
turing0 continues: "I attended the press conference at Toronto's Union Station, Track F, where I took a close look at the AP box which was mounted quite securely to a bank of payphones, and I was pretty impressed at how solid it appeared as various journalistic hacks took turns trying to pry the AP off the wall under the watch of Bell execs and a Bell phone tech. Bell is using Cisco AP1200's in the box as well as Alcatel ADSL modems with a 3Mb/Sec ADSL/ATM backhaul to the internet according to the Bell tech present. Various Bell types were wandering about with a pretty diverse collection of hardware such as Apple iBooks, Compaq PDA and IBM Thinkpads with 802.11 cards from Proxim, Cisco and Symbol as well as Dlink and SMC. Great use of a fully amortized asset (phone banks) and a very interesting spin on how to generate new revenue from a dying cost center - the payphone biz. Plus the added benefit of not having to negotiate new agreements with property management and landlords. Smooth move for Bell. Why didn't I think of that? Payphones, though declining in numbers, are still pretty much ubiquitous and are served with power as well as a good solid mounting location for the AP. In the final deployment Bell said that they would also be mounting AP's in the plenum and riser infrastructure of selected buildings should the full roll-out of the Accesszone product proceed. Is Bell Canada the first ILEC to recycle payphones?"
How much coverage? (Score:2, Interesting)
WiFi Ahoy! (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh well, guess we can just hope the leave them free
What about phreaks? (Score:1, Interesting)
Do existing agreements cover this? (Score:5, Interesting)
This assumes that their existing agreements allow them to conduct any sort of transaction on the covered property. If it limits them to phone service, they will have to renegotiate. I can't imagine many property managers would sign an agreement that lets them put anything they want in that spot.
the answer to how to charge is easy... (Score:5, Interesting)
Simple. Allow people to pay by purchasing prepaid cards or using their credit card and charging in block periods of 10 minutes. What's funny is that free wifi could possibly hurt the bell companies already failing payphone services even more if services that allow 'free long distance calls over the internet' become popular again. Although there is the bottleneck issue with wireless connections which would prevent that, plus the poor quality of such services usually (although I often get poor quality from many high-use area pay phones as well)
Great for VoIP... (Score:2, Interesting)
That's a nice way to regain some lost marketshare. It'll probably be a matter of time until VoIP cell phones hit the market in Canada...
If you can't beat them, join them... (and make them pay)
Re:Good Idea (Score:2, Interesting)
Amusingly, this supposedly "poor cellphone coverage" thing seems to be a myth. When I was flying out of Pearson in mid-August, my reception was just fine. I was able to carry on conversations and check my email without losing my signal.
Re:the answer to how to charge is easy... (Score:1, Interesting)
Bell Canada Megacorp (Score:5, Interesting)
Profit? They don't need to worry about that for a long time. They could support this for a decade while the market matures and its cost would still be in with the round-off errors of their ledgers. In the meantime they'll OWN the whole deal across Canada and be damn attractive to US sites looking for a stable partner. Forget .bombs, deal with a megacorp with lots of technology already in place. Pretty attractive to a hotel, airport, or municipality.
Yeah, I think this really could bring a big change to North America. The Baby Bells in the US are fractured and hamstrung. But with the market opened up to foreign ownership and activity Bell Canada may well have found their entrée into the US market. Widespread 802.11, first domestically then in the US, that could well be their opportunity. Forget cellular or land-line, offer a last-mile wireless.
I wonder how long they will be free when . . . . (Score:1, Interesting)
I disagree (Score:4, Interesting)
Additionally, I'd rather not have to whip out my cell phone and an extra modem and cable to look up an address on my Palm. In fact, I'd like to see them put hotspots on the actual buses and commuter trains. Can you imagine how many people would start commuting if they could play BF1942 on the way to/from work?
While you're at it, tack on an extra train car that houses a bar and a bunch of networked consoles or PCs. People would be riding past their stop on purpose!
Re:Why power companies aren't doing this (Score:2, Interesting)
Raf
It's already in the UK (Score:3, Interesting)
Not sure they quite meant it to be used this way...
Re:WiFi Ahoy! (Score:3, Interesting)
The only people who would even be likely to pay are business customers on travel, but, even then, it's not a big market.
Re:Tape Recorder Hacking (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Note to self... Check eBay.ca later today (Score:2, Interesting)
Just something to keep in mind.
Re:Tape Recorder Hacking (Score:3, Interesting)
This isn't really new.. (Score:1, Interesting)
It's a great idea really.. swipe your debit card, buy 30 minutes of Internet time while you wait for your bus. If only they'd add more of them.. and add time limits so everyone can play. =P