Instabridge announce free wi-fi for all in Amsterdam

by jp1989 • 13 years ago

16 8 13 years ago

huskyr• 13 years ago

Sounds interesting, i'm just wondering how these guys are planning to make money.

Instabridge's business model is said to be built on rewards from the (mobile) network owners, by reducing the overloaded mobile networks in dense high-traffic areas, instabridge expects to be rewarded by the network operators. The cost of expanding capacity of mobile networks in cities like Stockholm is enormous and operators wants to provide mobility, and have a big desire to offload video streaming in cafés and such things to wifi as much as possible.

Possibly they will also partner with ad networks and other sponsors such as samsung.

The full business model seems to be kept in the dark but at least they appear to have thought about revenues.

"The idea is that the app will be free for the user. Money should Instabridge instead serve by helping operators to manage congestion in existing mobile networks. Experience from pilot users is that they reduce their mobile data usage by between ten and 30 per cent when the app is installed."

Source- http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.470065 http://translate.google.se/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev...

jp19892• 13 years ago

Instabridge will most certainly partner up with major telco's in major cities - and like he says, they will be rewarded here. In addition, I know they've spoken about premium versions of the application which will most likely be ad-free etc.

parse_• 13 years ago

I really hope this grows in Europe. The public internet access, at least in Scandinavia, is terrible compared to the US where every mom and pop shop has free wifi (yes, I am using a VPN on those)

dhrona• 13 years ago

reduce mobile-data usage and thus money.

I'm curious, don't they have unlimited data plans there?

jp19892• 13 years ago

Of course some operators have it as an option - but it's not standard here, yet.

ersii• 13 years ago

It's actually getting uncommon for mobile unlimited data plans in Sweden again.

Almost all major carriers are now trying to squeeze out some cash for the mobile data plans. Some are succeeding very well, usually by packaging up calls, texts and a mobile data plan with 1-3GB/month for a fixed fee. {99, 149, 249, 299}SEK/month.

The 3G data network is very spotty in Stockholm, throughput-wise. I assume it's very congested. I have no idea about the 4G/LTE data network though.

venticco• 13 years ago

There is nothing for free in this world. Users data is almost always price in such cases.

Instabridge announce free wi-fi for all in Amsterdam

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