Strategies for Dealing with WiFi Squatters
Following up on yesterday's free WiFi post, I was wondering what strategies you think restaurants and coffee shops should use to deal with customers who take way too much advantage of free WiFi connections.
Jeffrey McManus thinks places like Panera will profit from people who succumb to the scent of fresh baked muffins while surfing the web.
Other restaurants, including one I was at in London, Ontario last year, issue WiFi access codes distributed by the wait staff. An access code is good for a fixed amount of time, like an hour, forcing patrons to ask for additional codes when their time runs out. While free, this does bring a certain level of guilt into the equation that could cause WiFi squatters to move on or spend more money to justify additional time on the network.
I've also heard of coffee shops turning their WiFi routers off to clear out the squatters. When people start asking what's going on, they plead ignorance, then turn it back on once the squatters have cleared out.
How do you think restaurants should deal with people who abuse this free service?
I've even heard of Paneras turning off their wifi routers during lunch, then back on after the rush.
I end up using wifi-enabled Paneras as a remote office when I'm on the road. Good food and fast (enough) connections. Buying tea and a bagel seems a worthwhile trade for the service. No guilt here, sorry... :)
Handing out 1hr (or some time limit) tokens is a nice solution. As is the simple one of just having the session only be active for an hour at a time. Then you have to reattach to get back online. This is nice because you can even put in a "allow 'n' reattaches per day/week/whatever" to control the long term net users.
In any case, please, please do put up a terms of use page so we don't have to hear any more stories about silly kids getting arrested for surfing in the parking lot--an explicit grant of use, regardless of location, totally eliminates the "stealing" argument.
As a side note, and as long as it is available on he inter-web... here is a story with Ed speaking about this very topic.
1. Posted by: Justin on March 5, 2007 12:15 AM:
At the Panera I go to, the staff is decent at coming by to ask if you need anything else - I usually feel enough guilty to order at least another coffee. I also don't mind the shops that give you a code for an hour of wifi for each purchase. Seems like a fair trade to me.