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News and information for free public access Wi-Fi location owners and users

We call a hotspot that offers free Wi-Fi internet access a Wi-Fi-FreeSpot.

Click here for the Wi-Fi-FreeSpot Directory.

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Want to learn how to build a FreeSpot? Go to WiFiFreenet.

 
Free Wi-Fi in the USA

The City of San Francisco has received a lot of attention recently for it's plans to provide city wide Wi-Fi coverage. Their RFP gathered 26 proposals and Google's proposal for free Wi-Fi has been the lead story in many publications.

Whether or not they are the chosen entity the attention their proposal has focused on location specific advertising is the real story. Imagine sitting in a coffee shop and seeing an ad for a sale on CDs or shoes or a 20% off coupon at a restaurant nearby, with directions to get there. You wouldn't even need to be in a coffee shop, you could be at home or work.

Not only could this work in San Francisco, it could work anywhere. Granted, having Google be the provider makes it a lot easier but any tech/marketing savvy entrepreneur could figure out how to make it work for them. The difference being that any location in San Francisco will be supporting Google and offsetting their costs whereas any independent location elsewhere would reap the benefit themselves.

Anything that supports the spread of and existence of Free Wi-Fi is good in my mind.

The Wi-Fi FreeSpot Directory continues to add 50-75 new locations every week. Most of these additions are in the USA while Europe has had a slower growth. I recently heard from someone in South Africa who is hoping to implement advertising supported Free Wi-Fi there. There are very few Free Wi-Fi locations anywhere on the African continent right now, hopefully that will change.
posted by Jim at 7:01 PM