A Free Business Idea: Conference Wifi

14/12/2008

Conference Wifi is still a problemThis is something I talked about in Paris as well. Seems like there is a real market for this as Michael Arrington is also worrying about the perfection of their wifi in next year’s TC50. My point was that since there is always talk on the internet after a conference (pick a place and theme with more than 1000 members) how the internet connectivity sucked, that someone set up a company who would guarantee connectivity for a much above market prices.

This is something we think about a lot at TechCrunch, because so many conferences have bad connectivity, and we need to make it perfect at TechCrunch50 next year. There’s a real business here if a large company can get it right and is willing to put a guarantee in place to conference organizers. They can charge almost anything – I’m sure Loic would have paid €200,000 if that’s what it took to get proper Internet for attendees. If they can build a reputation for reliability, and are willing to back up that reputation with a liquidated damages clause for failure in the range of, say, 5x the fee they charge, then I imagine every conference that could would hire them.

Src: TC

It’s a simple business idea: build a company around guaranteeing internet connectivity in large conferences. You can have your own gear, cables, etc., put a little bit of magic into the connectivity and guarantee that the internet works – I’m sure this future company would become world famous and a trusted brand globally within a year.

Image: Travelin’ Librarian CC:BY-NC

There are 4 comments in this article:

  1. 15/12/2008Michael Sauers say:

    Thanks for using my photo. I totally agree with your suggestion, as long as said cost is not passed on to the conference attendees. The last thing I was as an attendee is to register for the conference then have to pay an extra fee just to get online to talk about the conference.

  2. 15/12/2008Antti say:

    Michael, you’re welcome and thanks for the great photo.

    The point of my post was of course to make the conference Wifi work and not pass it on as extra cost to the attendees. That would be just outright silly.

  3. 17/12/2008mike say:

    WiFi nearly always sucks (too many people, too much interference from things like bluetooth etc).

    Also, WiFi == security nightmare for you, the end user.

    It is much better to get more ethernet drop points/cables and do it that way.

  4. 18/12/2008Michael Sauers say:

    You want to run more wires in a room full of 100+ people. You’re kidding right? As for security for you as a user, run something like HotSpotVPN and you’re all set.

Write a comment: