Honolulu Hale lukewarm

Doug White spotlights in a Saturday post to his blog, Poinography! a Pacific Business News (PBN) story on Honolulu's hesitant step into free wireless. According to the PBN story, city locations including Kapolei Hale will be free wireless hotspots, but only to access the City web site and other Skywave sponsored accounts. (Skywave is the company providing the service to the County.) Doug muses:

Does the City think that people are actually going to be happy when they find a “free” Wi-Fi access point at Kapolei Hale and then discover that they can only look at the City’s website—and a bunch of advertising?! That’s ridiculous.

What did the City get out of this? A few hundred dollars worth of wireless routers and tech support would be enough to give visitors to City Hall real access to the entire Internet.

The PBN article further writes of another company, ShakaNet, which plans to blanket Waikiki with free access. "Access to ShakaNet's wireless network will require acceptance of a user agreement and viewing of an advertising page, but no registration and no fee." PBN reports Nam Vu, ShakaNet's vice president and chief technology officer, as saying:

As more residents adopt wireless Internet on open networks, giving access to many living around them, free access has become commonplace and making money off of that model is the best way to go...especially in residential areas.

Doug White concludes his post with:

In any case, the Capitol and City Hall should both have free Wi-Fi. It just makes sense.