Why lock down your network resource when you can share excess capacity for some fair compensation? 2. In both residential and public settings, enough incentivisation can encourage a sharing economy, similar to Airbnb or Uber. While sharing come with benefits, there is simply no reason for users to share their connections. This can be due to contractual limitations (service providers may legally limit access within one household to protect their own business models). Interestingly even those living in residential areas, where people are familiar with each other the other, still keep their access locked. This has been a major stumbling block to creating a Wi-Fi sharing economy. However, the absence of incentives has deterred hosts from joining the list of thousands of hotspots that already exist in places like restaurants, malls, and airports. Even open-source initiatives like DD-WRT and WifiDog offer captive networks based on individual users sharing their networks with the public. For instance, among many others, Cisco had always actively promoted carrier-based solutions such as Passpoint (802.11u / Hotspot 2.0) and WISPr since the late 2000s.

It has been around since before smartphones became popular. While there exists a few networks of paid and premium Wi-Fi hotspot networks that individual users can access, there is under-utilisation in what could be a viable public hotspot network run by both business and individual operators. This growth, however, comes with some challenges and stumbling blocks. By 2020, the number of wireless hotspots is expected to hit 432.5 million.

Wi-Fi hotspots, which allow for internet connectivity, have been on the increase - you only need to open a laptop to see how numerous they are. Wi-Fi is also the preferred means of connecting because it is faster, especially in emerging markets where cellular data is not yet as developed or pervasive as in developed economies.Īs of today, there’s a vast availability of Wi-Fi networks and large quantities of underutilised wireless bandwidth in populated regions. And while a growing proportion of smartphone users are shifting from Wi-Fi access to mobile data, Wi-Fi networks still account for around a half of usage. Globally, there are more than 3.5 billion internet users actively using the internet - almost a half of the total world population. We now live in a world that is almost fully dependent on the internet.

On-demand and profitable Wi-Fi sharing can help improve the way we access the internet across the globe

Wifidog do wrt