SwampFox

A test of Joe's idea - Can you help make your city wireless?

Submitted by: Joe Milam on Jun 22, 2008 at 1:57 am Tagged with: idea creation, Wireless Source: BigLeapGPS

Swamp Fox note: Joe Milam indicates that he posted this idea in response to our question, Can we create a company here to come up with ideas? Part I and Part II. We really appreciate Joe taking us up on our idea. Take time to consider Joe's idea and how you can contribute to it. Then post your own idea to Swamp Fox just like Joe did. It would be very cool if members sharing ideas with one another became a regular activity of the Swamp Fox Community.

When I had coffee with John Warner in the Fall of last year to talk about my BigLeapGPS idea; we had met at Port City Java on a busy morning. I asked John to sit outside because I was, at that time, like most other idea guys... I was very careful about who I talked to and who was listening. John made a point to me about my concerns. He said if I stood in the middle of Port City Java and announced to the customers what I was doing with BigLeapGPS and how I was going to do it, no one would do anything about it. No one would steal this idea I hold so close to my heart and I guess number one point is no one will implement what it would take to start a business around it. I believe those comments now more than ever being reminded of the trials it takes to get a start up started.
So with all that being said, I have an idea and I want to share it with the Swamp Fox community and I want to see if anyone will actually construct a business case around this idea and do something with it. Here it is:

Many of you may remember that back in 2003 I installed one of the first business sponsored Wi-Fi networks in the country right here in downtown Greenville. Well after the keys to the wireless network were given to another company to run it has not run very well, if at all. I have an idea on how to get a working wireless network back up in downtown Greenville as well as provide a marketing medium for the participates in the network.

In summary, get a lot of restaurants, bars and other businesses in the downtown areas all up and down Main Street to allow you to install a small piece of software on their existing wireless access point or sell an access point for $95.00. Set all the network names to the same SSID or network identifer, something like freeGVwireless.com whatever the website address is. And have all the access points redirect anyone who logs onto them to this www.freeGVwireless.com website where all the participating businesses are highlighted.

Forget having cities spend hundreds and millions on Metro-Wi-Fi projects, build the networks organically from the centers of commerce.

The key here is to have the participating business pay very little if anything for the exposure on the website because they are helping fuel traffic to the site. This is where you need to be creative on how to generate revenue from this model. There is your challenge Swamp Fox... let's see if we can figure this out. If this is NOT a good idea, please let me know that as well and let me know why.

As always, you can post comments below or contact me through Swamp Fox.

Here is the link to the software: http://www.dd-wrt.com/dd-wrtv3/

Thank you and good luck!

Joe Milam