Starbucks and Hotspot

Well, I paid my 7.50 $CAN to get connected to the net at the local Starbucks. The good news is that it worked, it was relatively easy, and I can post to the blog. The bad news is that 7.50 for 1 hour of connection time is bloody highway robbery. I know I could have paid just less than double that for a whole day’s use, but I’m only here ’till Deb and Dennis get out of church, so…

Here’s the thing though: The service routes through a standard wireless connection. We all know what the limits are on that technology: the bottom line is that the total bandwidth that I can push through this is exactly the same as I can do at home. And in case you’re saying, “But there could be more people there”, no, we all share the bandwidth. More people just means slower transfers for me.

So the real question is, why am I being charged so much for this? Like everything else in our society, the answer is, because they can (currently) get away with it. The incremental cost to get their service set up at this Starbucks was almost certainly less than $500 over what it cost to do it at home. But for some reason, they think it makes sense to charge me, what, 5 orders of magnitude more or so. It’s insane. Bell, in case you’re listening, I would have happily payed $7.50 for a month of connection time.

It’s exactly the same problem that we currently have with data plans on cell phones.

I can tell you though, the first coffee shop that comes up with a fixed monthly usage rate, will get all my business. Think about it guys.