Free WiFi - What if?

What if every person in the United States were connected to the Internet for free through a always on WiFi signal? Say you were sitting at your kitchen table or walking to your favorite hangout? How about taking a tour cross-country with your pals visiting every baseball park in the United States? What then and why would a task like this be attempted. The answer: Location Based Services.

This concept isn't anything new, the folks at Google provide free WiFi to a entire town in Mountain View, California. In mid-2007 they even planned to take free WiFi into San Francisco, CA but the San Francisco politicians stopped it and made a few SF residents happy.

However, a new company, Meraki (partly funded by who else, Google) is trying to get free WiFi to San Franciscoans with some great success. Currently they have signed up 51,517 users since it began. Meraki has built the backbone of the system using a mesh network of solar-powered wireless repeaters installed on rooftops of city residents willing to put it on their roof. The service will be ad-supported from a toolbar at the top of your browser that serves up local advertising, which is one of the ways Meraki is able to keep Internet access free. I wonder how they plan to monetize subscribers with a WiFi mobile phone? Any thoughts?

A similar attempt is taking shape across the pond as-well.