Free Wi-Fi Coming To Japanese Vending Machines

cylonlover writes "Free Wi-Fi is on its way to some Japanese vending machines. Working much like a mobile hotspot at your local coffee shop, people located near the machines would be able to connect to the internet for 30 minutes at a time and surf the web. The service is available to anyone, to use with any smartphone, tablet, or computer and does not require the purchase of a drink from the machine."

Excellent Idea

[InterestingFella]

Wi-Fi coverage is hindered by the fact that people have tried to explicitly set up Wi-Fi networks. This only makes it economical if users are charged for access and even then limits the availability to highly populated areas. But there's vending machines in many places - just throw in Wi-Fi hotspot in them and eventually you will get huge coverage and the costs are subsidized in the vending machine buying/renting price. If you need to make money on top of that, throwing in an ad or two should do the trick and keep the service free for anyone.

Phone booths

[arose]

The former telco monopoly in Latvia uses phone-booths. It's just about the perfect solution to both wi-fi coverage and public phone disuse, I'm surprised I haven't seen it anywhere else.

Isn't this need slowly disappearing?

[froggymana]

Why would I need to connect to a wifi hotspot when I have 3G/4G cellular service on my phone? The need for more and more public wifi hotspots is definitely going down as more and more people get smartphones/cellular dongles. Personally I often prefer using my phone's 3G in the city since I don't need to worry about having an unsecured connection to a random router that may be running a transparent proxy collecting my data, I don't need to open my web browser to agree to their terms and it is often faster/more consistent.