How common is wifi service while at anchor

[Jman]

Originally Posted by seadog1775

I was thinking of the moorings around Saint John Water Island Saint Thomas. What is an average stay in moorings like that. A couple days? A week? When you are on your boats . Anywhere in the USVI or BVI . Do you get online? If so . How do you do it ? Cell got to be slow and expensive. My thinking was more on the lines of 3 to 5 dollars a day. At 4 dollars a day for a boat that stays 5 days. That's 20 dollars. Now if you could get 20 boats in that mooring field a week staying 4 to 7 days. That's roughly 400 a week in one mooring field. Now USVI has several mooring fields. If I could get 3 to pull those numbers. that's 1200 a week. No labor. Repeater location costs would be an issue. But I am sure businesses would be happy to oblige for free add placements . I set up the sight and you pay by charge card as long as you use it. That is kind of my train of thought for this. Also the add space I could sell for boat repair ,services,ect. I just do not know the length of stay and the other forms of internet access boaters get and use. But I know almost everyone I know is on the computer at least once a day here. This is just rough idea . I am open to any suggestions of services you guys would desire

Just wondering how much you would be paying for adequate bandwidth in far reaching places. $4 a day sounds great for high speed wifi, but if it crawls, you will have nothing but complaints. And probably postings on sites like this of don't sign up for seadogs crappy service that was just a waste of $4. This only gets worse when you have harbor full of boats looking to watch Netflix.


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[Dulcesuenos]

In the bahamas you can get wimax or out island internet , if your near an island w a tower or a few miles away and y9 have a booster,,cost about 112. Month. But slow and wont do well for movies etc.

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[wsmurdoch]

Originally Posted by seadog1775

I am trying to figure out a business model to serve boaters at anchor. 16 years of driving trains has about done it for me. I am not looking for a million dollar business. Just something to keep my head above water . And to be close to the ocean to learn how to sail. And get into a boat down the road. If I provided internet service. That could also be a platform to advertise other services. Deliveries, laundry service, menu's from local restaurants that we would deliver for. You guys are the ones with the answers. I have got a lot of good input on here so far. I have seen hothothotspot getting bad reviews. I don't know? Me and the wife are ready to make a move. And I could think of nothing better than serving you guys . And getting to hear of your travels all at the same time. Any input with this dream of mine would be greatly appreciated.

On one of our wintertime trips down the ICW to the Bahamas in perhaps Melbourne, Cocoa, or maybe Jensen Beach anchored for the night at one of the bridges crossing the ICW, we hoisted our Alfa USB WiFi adaptor to the spreaders and connected to what seemed to be an unlocked cable provided home WiFi that had a splash page of nearby restaurants and such. It had a map of walking routes starting from the park at the bridge and a request that the business be told where I learned of them. My guess is it was some nearby kid using daddy's WiFi and selling ads to businesses. It sounds like what you are proposing.

Irish Eyes to the Bahamas

[Stu Jackson]

There is one in Clipper Cove on San Francisco Bay. The business model: set up the signal and if someone's there without a smart phone and just a laptop and wifi extender, and your signal is there and it's the only way he connect with his laptop, that's the limited "audience."

$10 for an hour, $15 maybe for four, $20 for 12 or 24 hours, I forget. I used it twice a few years ago.

These days I stay disconnected, listen to music or bring a DVD.

Yawn...

[hellosailor]

Rover, you are ruining my business. I'm the guy that sets up all those free wifi spots, and then makes millions by cleaning out brokerage accounts when all those rich yachties sign on to check their earnings and pay their bills. Among other nefarious activities. So please, stop discouraging risky internet connections, I've got bills to pay!


seadog-
You're looking at a business that anyone can get into, which means competition can always try to underbid you or compete in other ways. And the liability issues with free wifi, and of course, if you compete with us hackers and pirates, we' be hard pressed to eliminate the competition quickly, you know.
Not to mention, with a reasonable data plan and a cell phone, any idiot can have a more secure internet connection. Unless of course I'm using a "stingray" or other man-in-the-middle scheme to intercept that as well, which is really easy these days.


But if you cam up with something like a subscription access to a secure connection method, made the whole solution real simple and robust, and told people "Twelve bucks a month, and even your free public connections will be secure" then you might have something. A VPN would be the core, folks just don't seem willing to use them. But then there are major security flaws even in the https protocols used on the web, so offering "real" security might keep you on your toes.
Maybe a remote access (oops, that's not secure either(G) session offering to optimize a cruiser's computer's internet settings and software, so they could stay at home and "become more secure" before they go off cruising. The trick is always in the marketing, you'd hire out to cheap help in Hyberabad and other places to have the connection sessions done.

[Hudson Force]

Seadog1775, I first thought that you were a cruiser looking for access to the internet, but by your words, you've let us know that you're interested in exploiting large groups of us paying you $4/day for internet access.

I don't see a viable future with your plans. I'm not able to speak for the "high dollar, off for the two week charter, tied to the computer, business group", but most of us here are full time cruisers or those with a tighter hold on our wallets. There are too many other options with increasing cell phone coverage and teathered android phones with unlimited data plans that give far more than just wifi access for less than $2/day.

[AnchorageGuy]

Many cruisers today use their cell phone provider for their wifi access on the water. At least in the U.S. there are very few locations where wifi is not available. In the Bahamas it is spotty but getting better for coverage. Chuck

[belizesailor]

Many cruisers now use cellular modems and swap out SIM chips as they change countries. Here in the W Carib data plans are about $15/month. Not blazing fast or high data limits, but functional.

[monte]

We mainly use phone sim data plans as well, but occasionally hotspot services like hothothotspot. The best place for a hotspot service is a popular charter anchorage. Somewhere like jolly harbour antigua has no hotspot service and regularly 30 yachts anchored there. I don't see much setup cost or downside to setting up a wifi pay service there, but you would need a location nearby for the router. Really what's the investment cost for a setup? A router, some software, set up a PayPal account. Could probably be done for under $500 easily enough. Sharing a standard land service with 10-20 yachts at a time probably wouldn't slow the connection speeds below what any of us expect and hothothotspot rates seem fair. Or as I suggested, contact one of the local suppliers and offer to extend the service to your area, although if it's just supplying and maintaining the router I wouldn't think the commission would be very high, but it might be worthwhile making the enquiry. I'd probably aim at setting up your own network and also look I to neighbouring anchorages and look for businesses or residences that are interested in joining your network, similar to the way hothothotspot seem to manage theirs. I think it's the kind of business you can start off small without much capital and grow, or adapt to the surrounding needs.

[zboss]

Originally Posted by AnchorageGuy

Many cruisers today use their cell phone provider for their wifi access on the water. At least in the U.S. there are very few locations where wifi is not available. In the Bahamas it is spotty but getting better for coverage. Chuck

We have a good blog write-up on using cell services. I think Wi-fi from our perspective is going away. If we happen to be in a place that has wi-fi then we will use it but we probably would not sign up for wi-fi in the Abacos again.

Staying on the Grid - part 2 - Tiki Trek Sailing

[hellosailor]

$4/day...in the US there are plenty of $30/month "unlimited everything" plans. Even if they throttle down to 2G speeds, that's fast enough for interactive webbing.

[zboss]

Originally Posted by hellosailor

$4/day...in the US there are plenty of $30/month "unlimited everything" plans. Even if they throttle down to 2G speeds, that's fast enough for interactive webbing.

Exactly. These cell companies are in a "race to the top" in regards to speed... but who cares about 50 megabits per second when you only have 5 GB of data to use a month? How about unlimited data @ 1.5 Mbps @ $15 a month!

Until super-wifi, which has a range of up to about a 100 miles, is ratified (if ever) then wi-fi will continue to loose user share to 5G cell services.

[autumnbreeze27]

Many times the anchorage is going to be in an area with no broadband. Our marina has wifi, I was on the board of a local yacht club when they installed in the harbor. They worked with the city to get permission to use the city buildings, and since the marina doesn't have a decent hard line for broadband they beam it over from another marina 10 miles away.