August 12, 2003
Are You in a Hot Spot?... Let's take five with Moira Gunn. This is "Five Minutes".
Driving away from San Francisco International Airport yesterday I couldn't miss the new giant billboard. Need a wireless hook-up? Why go to your nearest McDonald's! Just look for the Golden Arches, and that now-familiar symbol of the Internet: the @ sign.
Here in the Bay Area, you can buy a 2-hour session for about $5, but in the earlier Manhattan rollout, McDonald's offered an hour of free high-speed Internet access if you purchased an Extra Value meal. Now that has to be a deal that goes down in nutrition history, as it virtually ensures that you sit for an hour after consuming all those calories. How do you get up and start burning them off after that?
But, to be fair, McDonald's is just trying to work out the right combination of time, price and food. People should only stay so long at a fast food restaurant, and food and equipment are never a good mix. Of course, neither is coffee, but that hasn't stopped Starbucks from charging ahead on its own wireless initiative with T-Mobile.
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There's a land rush on in the public wireless space right now, and you can read about it if you follow the business sheet. SBC Communication recently announced it would spend the next three years setting up 20,000 wireless access points in 13 states, which followed similar announcements from Verizon and Sprint. Looking closely, you see the traffic patterns of the technically savvy, along with the opportunity for the physical space needed to spawn a hot spot.
Today's technology only permits a 300' radius, so you can see why a McDonald's restaurant provides a nice tidy packet of real estate from which to operate.
But what if you're just about anywhere? Verizon's plan commandeers some 1,000 pay phones in Manhattan, hoping to create a hearty supply of service. Although by no means guaranteeing blanket coverage, it targets the greatest number of people in the shortest possible time.
And, of course, there's always new technology just around the corner. The next generation offers a one-mile radius, and when that happens, what about the infrastructure we're racing to put into place today? Will the McDonald's hot spots become obsolete?
And then there's the invisible real estate to consider, as well.
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All these technologies have to share frequencies on the public airwaves, frequencies which are auctioned off by the federal government. Additionally, the American airspace is unbelievably crowded, so it's entirely possible to develop a technology, and have it rendered unusable simply because no frequencies are available - sort of a technology version of "all dressed up and no place to go."
Much of the globe doesn't share our "frequency congestion" problems, so let's consider a map of the world according to McDonald's. With 30,000 restaurants in over 100 countries, global wireless planning has already started, beginning with their 4,000 locations in Japan.
There's no doubt we are witnessing the build out of a massive information infrastructure, not unlike the build out of telephones, broadcast television and even the Interstate highway system. And when it's complete, the function and value of all our electronics will change. How we use our cell phones, laptops and even digital cameras today will shortly appear primitive.
And know this - any time anything makes it to a McDonald's, its next stop is global ubiquity.
I'm Moira Gunn. This is Five Minutes.
