A Discomforting Precedent For WiFi "Hot Spots"

rob.sharp writes: "The BBC have some history lessons for wireless networks ...", pointing to an article about a wireless phone service called Rabbit, which relied on access areas similar in concept to the WiFi "hot spots" ISPs and business are experimenting with around the globe right now. ("Subscribers to the service, backed by Hutchison Whampoa, could make mobile calls when they were within 100 metres of a Rabbit transmitter.") Rabbit didn't work out well, though, and the article questions whether 802.11 access providers can do any better.

Was called kermit in holland

[SmallFurryCreature]

The phones where basically like a cordless phone, and priced only a little bit more expensive, and could work in places like metros, shopping centres and train stations. Its failure wasn't spectacular because nobody noticed it. The phones where in the display of the national phone company (only had the one back then) and then all of a sudden they where gone. Only later with prepaid gsm did mobile phones take off. After in all the places that kermit worked you also had public phones. So the service was redundant. But how many public ethernet ports do exists? Outside airports I never seen them.

I also think the article makes the wrong comparison. Considering the target audience arent wireless hotspots like the early mobile (car) phones? You know the ones like a brick that only worked in the large cities? They took of like the proverbial rccket. Wireless computing is aimed at the business men, kermit was aimed at the consumer.

One major drawback

[gnalre]

The one major drawback with the rabbit phones was that you could not receive incoming calls on them so making them basically useless(You do wonder who comes up with these ideas).

This is not a problem with WiFi because emails onlike phone calls do not need to be handled at once. Basically it will allow you to read the internet and catch up with emails when you get to the station or airport. I can see that being quite attractive.

Re:Mobile Phones are not for this technology

[RatFink100]

Guess where that technology comes from?

In the UK at least DECT phones (digital cordless) are the direct descendant of the Rabbit phones.

Remember this was 1989. Real mobile phones were cumbersome and very expensive. This was an attempt to make them more widely available - albeit in a less functional form.

Rabbit was a glorified payphone

[johnslater]

Rabbit didn't fail because cellular/mobile phones overtook it. It failed because it offered no compelling advantage over a conventional payphone.

Rabbit phones didn't take incoming calls, and were only usable close to a "hotspot" where payphones were plentiful. Call charges were similar, and payphone users didn't need to buy equipment.

Payphones killed Rabbit, and now cellular/mobile is killing payphones. Two separate battles, 10 years apart.

(One marginal benefit of Rabbit was the ability to use the same phone at home with your own personal base station connected to your POTS line, like a conventional cordless phone. This wasn't enough to sell the service though. After the service collapsed, Rabbit phones and home base stations were sold off dirt cheap as digital cordless phones, and very good they were too.)

Rabbit was NOT a mobile phone

[GilesP]

Rabbit was launched in the UK primarily as a solution to the lack of (working) public pay phones.

It was not intended to be used as a mobile phone, rather it was a work around to the restrictions that prevented pay phones being installed in many locations, and the fact that most pay phones were vandalised constantly.

Unfortunately, shortly after Rabbit was launched, the laws were changed to allow more pay phones to be installed (by companies other than BT), so it kind of under cut Rabbit.

This combined with the fact that mobile phones became portable (as opposed to tethered to a car battery) meant the Rabbit didn't really stand a chance. Rabbit was really a case of too little too late.

One point about Rabbit was that you got a base station to use in your home. This base station could also be used by other Rabbit users to make calls if they were in range. This meant that the Rabbit network got larger as more people became customers, just like current community WiFi initiatives such as Consume [consume.net] et al.

Re:Free?

[iuyterw]

http://www.wifinder.com/

http://www.shmoo.com/gawd/