Turning aside from Vivid and talking about data capture generally, Hall says there’s a “question over privacy that needs to be handled better”.
“There should be a value exchange, an easily understood agreement between the two parties about what’s being provided,” he says. “I wouldn’t like to know that people can intercept my browsing history as I walked around. Even though most providers say they don’t link a name [to the device’s unique MAC address] they also have your name in a database.”
He says selling a device owner’s data to third party providers “needs to be debated” and legalese eliminated when logging-on. “It should be explained in a more straightforward way; [consumers] are often not fully informed [of how their data will be used], I think.”
US start-ups such as AisleLabs and Euclid Analytics are among a growing number of big data providers analysing user patterns on wi-fi networks. They analyse information such as which devices are on the network, their location, type and web activity.
Elsewhere, councils want wi-fi to engage with citizens. Last year, Adelaide City Council and Internode, which is owned by iiNet, installed a Cisco network of 300 APs to encourage people into the city’s lanes and parks. Other cities are installing APs on light poles, so they only glow when a citizen comes near, cutting power costs and tracking facilities use.
But the trend over the past five years for councils to deploy their own networks runs into policing and mandatory data retention laws passed by the federal government with Labor support in March, says Acurix co-founder and executive director Martyn Levy. And it could leave councils liable if spooks demand the identity of a user,
he says.
“[Councils] struggle to comply with the telecommunications carrier obligations. [Our] advantage is we have a carrier licence; our customers pass the bat to us,” Levy says. “Councils that deploy and operate their own networks are skirting the law.”
Acurix managing director Grant Farrow says film and TV studios will be “rubbing their hands together” to access public wi-fi data. “This may be cynical, but the people taking the most advantage of this will be for commercial gains,” Farrow says. “Most councils haven’t even thought about it.”
Acurix, which recorded 2.5 million wi-fi sessions on its networks last year, is a turnkey solutions provider and vendor of its own APs. It also distributes its solutions to value-added resellers and managed service providers. Its APs have the advantage of hardening against the brutal WA conditions that would melt and corrode other vendors’ enclosures, Levy says.
One of its customers, the Rottnest Island Authority, was the beneficiary last December as Instagram ‘quokka selfies’ went viral. Farrow says that, “just the fact that people are connected made it easier”.
iiNet wireless
Another way into council contracts is through street light upgrades. Greg Bader, chief business officer of iiNet, says councils justify public wi-fi through the benefit of replacing 50-year-old halogen public lighting for LEDs that use a third of the power.
“If you already have a wi-fi network, the incremental cost to add wireless control is nothing,” says Bader.
“So now you have a city area that has LED lighting and discreet control down to a unit [light pole] level; it saves maintenance and gives real-time reporting on performance.” Bader says outside lights could be used in the same way as they are inside licensed premises: to persuade people to go home at the end of the night.
“It’s almost psychology. Imagine an area of the city, it’s 3am and the pubs have closed and you have people on the street. You can vary the intensity of the lights to disperse the crowd.”
Although cellular mobile networks are replacements in many ways, wi-fi network operators can access their own data directly, Bader says, especially for smart cities applications, such as rubbish pickup or finding parking spots.
In some cases, up to a third of drivers were looking for parking, so guiding them more efficiently to a reserved car space eases congestion and cuts toxic emissions. “We look at the wi-fi as swamping a city, providing public access, and over the top we run a layer of command and control functionality for city services. You can bring up a real-time picture of what is happening in your city,” Bader says.
Technology is shifting, with more devices and better wireless protocols such as 802.11ac, but not enough partners are capitalising on opportunities to go back into existing wi-fi customers and update their infrastructure.
Such ‘re-dimensioning’ treats even those spaces that have had wi-fi for years as greenfields sites, says Steve Coad, ANZ managing director of Aruba, the vendor
that HP recently acquired to edge it closer to market leader Cisco.
“We have only a small number of resellers who are as skilled as my own guys when it comes to doing site surveys, and this is a chargeable service that is highly specialised,” Coad says. “It’s a big opportunity for the right guys.”
Coad says the release of Apple Watch, which sold out within hours as a million orders were made in the US, should spur resellers to go back into their customers. That is because the device strains existing networks that were dimensioned up to 10 years ago for laptops.
The low-power Apple Watch greatly increases the density of devices in a given area and, being worn by a huge blob of signal-attenuating water molecules, challenges wireless reception.
“I’d advise resellers to skill up around this area because there’s not enough people doing it at the moment. We tend to use the same handful of partners to do these jobs and they’re being stretched,” says Coad.
Next: Wireless and 'The Internet of Things
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