WiFi Planet says it’s not 100% official yet, but if the city council of Rio Rancho, New Mexico, votes as expected tomorrow night, that municipality will soon offer city-wide Wi-Fi-based Internet access to every resident and visitor for free.
Azulstar Networks of Grand Haven, Michigan, is the provider of the Rio Rancho network (as well as a few in its home state). Up until this point, the company was charging for wireless Internet access with different tiers of service ranging from 256 kilobits per second (Kbps) up to 1.5 Megabits (Mbps).
If the vote goes through, however, anyone can go online in the city for free, though limited to 100Kbps download data rate — and only for 10 hours per month, and with $1.50 per minute charges for tech support.
The city of Rio Rancho will give up any the money made in its current revenue share deal with Azulstar. An increase of 10 to 20 times the users is expected.
What’s in it for Azulstar? Anyone signing on to the network for free has to go through an Azulstar portal page which will feature highly targeted advertising — ads which can make the company as much as 50 times that of a generic commercial.
Full video multimedia commercials are also planned. “It’s like the power of broadcast TV, but we know where the people are connecting from,” says van Houwelingen, CEO of Azulstar Networks.
The Azulstar network also offers a Voice over Wi-Fi telephone service for residential, business and mobile telephone users. Customers can select from a variety of fixed and mobile handsets, choose a local phone number or keep their existing number.
Free (commercially driven) city clouds looks like a trend.
Cox Cable is teaming with MobilePro to provide Wi-Fi in Tempe, Chandler and Gilbert, Arizonia. But they’re not giving nothin’ away…unless you buy cable.
MetroFi dropped fees for wireless Internet access in Santa Clara and Cupertino, earlier this year.
MetroFi, which uses SkyPilot mesh gear, once offered two choices; a $19.95/month, 1 Mbps wireless access service (without advertising), or a free 1 Mbps wireless access service (with a half-inch advertising strip at the top of their Web browser).
Now only the advertising version will be available.
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