Commercial WiFi as a start-up hotspot: The next mobile portal is in contention

"What is the WiFi account number and password?" "This phrase has become a lot of smart phone users come to unfamiliar consumer place mantra." As the mobile Internet has enabled people to surf the internet all day, it has become a new battleground for entrepreneurs and internet giants to have WiFi-like air around people.

This is a mysterious and crazy business, but also a battlefield full of bloodshed and chaos, the Beijing Times reporter will reveal the commercial WiFi grassroots players of the innovation, melee, fate and worries. Beijing Times reporter Liao Feng

It's written in front.

Who's in the battle for commercial WiFi

Beijing white Collar Xiao Wang is a member of hundreds of millions of smartphone users in China. In the past two years, Xiao Wang found that in addition to the airport, restaurants, cafes and large shopping malls, many hostels, small eateries, even buses and subways, have started to provide free WiFi. Like most consumers, Xiao Wang does not know that free wifi in these public places is collectively known as commercial WiFi, With home WiFi and enterprise WiFi as the third type of WiFi.

For free wifi in public places, the expansion of the scale, Xiao Wang is loved. A few years ago, when he first began to use the smartphone, in some ultra and the airport can also search mobile, Unicom, telecom three major WLAN hotspot, but the operator free wireless network is too complicated, and even spent a half-day effort also not login, so that Xiao Wang Spit, Connect operators to their WLAN hotspots no more than 10 times.

Wang's experience is a common "pain point" for many smartphone users. As early as 5 years ago, the three operators began to lay a large area of Wi-Fi hotspots, which operators call WLANs. A few years later, the number of WLAN hotspots installed by operators has been millions. Although smartphones can easily search for these hotspots, the operators ' heavy investment has not won the applause of the users.

Free WiFi is not a force for operators, providing opportunities for many grassroots entrepreneurs. They have worked as hard as ants to fill the gaps in WiFi, moving between operators, manufacturers, internet companies, businesses and consumers. Most of them are for businesses, such as Andy, Zibong information, tree Bear Network, to sell equipment and provide network maintenance and data statistics services, consumers through their "local" access to the landing page to achieve networking, and some entrepreneurs, they are more closely related to consumers, The products provided are in the form of app or micro-public number, which eliminates the process of repeatedly authenticating logins in different locations and enables "one-stop" Internet access, including WiFi partners, wifi sharing elves, WiFi key, WiFi free pass, etc.

For the internet giants, which favor the O2O concept, because commercial WiFi has a natural exclusivity (the same business does not have multiple routers at the same time), to gain access to its own WiFi system, it is tantamount to mastering the offline O2O entrance. Globally, internet giants such as Google (584.73, 2.39, 0.41%) and Facebook are also expanding their commercial WiFi programs.

WiFi business, at least operators, grassroots entrepreneurs and the original Internet companies in contention.

What do entrepreneurs think of commercial WiFi?

Or the next mobile entry.

The small Wang who has the mentality of greed and petty gain, virtually become the strong backing of countless entrepreneurs.

"Commercial WiFi has now become a ' tuyere on the Pig ', a lot of original real estate, do mahogany furniture are also admission." Reiger regrets. Reiger 2012, when the establishment of the tree Bear Network, the country did not 10 of commercial WiFi, the first half of this year the market has at least three hundred or four hundred players.

In Reiger and Mai Xin Lian Network co-founder Zhaoning, and other people, operators of WLAN hotspots laying in the open road and other commercial value of smaller places, the internet process cumbersome, free use of the length of the limited, operators are not connected between hot spots, not attractive to consumers. In addition, the free wifi in some modes of transport itself does not have a commercial drive, resulting in poor maintenance later, become a half-baked image project. "Operators of a large number of free WiFi, will inevitably reduce the user's mobile traffic, it is difficult to imagine that these two-handedness project can exist in the same system, and now the operator's investment focus has been placed in the 4G backbone network construction." "Reiger said.

There are tens of millions of companies with WiFi demand in the country, but the industry is estimated to cover less than 100,000. Zhaoning told reporters: "Most of the earliest routers should be changed, not yet to provide WiFi to the public public places also have a large number of market white, this part of the gap is a few operators to another investment can not fill." "With this blank lure, more and more players are admitted.

One of the earliest players in the market was the 2007 Michael Dee, a chain café, bookstore, WiFi is laid and maintained at fast food outlets and at the airport's commercial premises. Michael's business model is to find manufacturers to customize the hardware, research and development design of the router software system, to sell commercial routers to businesses, in the maintenance of network WiFi in the process of selling ads on the WiFi access page and flow diversion, to undertake businesses and Third-party brand owners ads.

In the Chinese market, which is used to playing the price war, it has become the consensus of commercial WiFi players that selling equipment is hard to make money. The ad model that Michael created is considered the most direct and effective mode of change, and some even call it "the mobile end of the media." Based on this, the current users use commercial WiFi often see pop-up welcome page ads, landing page ads and guide the app download channel.

What does commercial WiFi do for profit?

Precision Advertising + Value-added services

In addition to advertising, commercial WiFi players in the heart understand that users access to commercial WiFi, there are too many things to do, especially this year, in the O2O trend, to provide business based on large data, LBS (location services) and the cloud of personalized value-added services will be a great deal, Commercial WiFi also provides "infrastructure" for settling user data.

At the beginning of May this year, Alipay and the Tree Bear Network jointly promote Alipay free WiFi items, such as Xiao Wang after the user into the Alipay free WiFi coverage area, Alipay Wallet will receive a push message, click the message authentication can be connected to the Internet. Tencent (125.1, 0.40, 0.32%, real time) 's Yeahwifi project is similar to this: users enter the store can connect Yeahwifi hot spots, through the attention Yeahwifi public number, users can obtain password implementation login.

Because the login commercial WiFi needs authentication, the user can enter the mobile phone number, QQ, Weibo (21.04,-0.96,-4.36%) and so on login, this makes the merchant obtains the real user the cost to be greatly reduced. Reiger, users can connect to WiFi, which means that the user's location information could be tracked. Users to enter a shopping mall, connected to the free WiFi in the mall, theoretically can do the user to go to which counter, can receive the information sent by the merchant, and can collect the user to walk the route and at which counters before the time to stay.

A case provided by Ari shows that the koala and the cat a brand to cooperate, if the user has used mobile phone in the brand cat shop consumption, when he came to the brand entity shop, the store's wireless router will recognize the user's mobile phone, and according to the consumption record to carry out accurate marketing. Tencent's Yeahwifi project uses micro-letter to do the intermediary, the user just pay attention to the store public number, leaving the store after the merchants can still push new products and preferential information.

Commercial WiFi can even through the user behavior analysis to draw a portrait of the user group, but also for merchants to carry out traffic, passenger flow shopping conversion rate statistics, the current players have also targeted the mobile payment field. But Zhaoning admits, although with the merchant split appears to be a good profit model, but will be offline payment into online payment, will inevitably touch offline pos payment settlement Fang Ban Cheese, in addition, to guide users in the business of WiFi environment to do online payment, promotion threshold is very high.

Industry points out that the frequency of advertising admission, the user experience is also the smoothness of commercial WiFi competition focus, how to choose between the user experience and profit, to the entrepreneurs have a problem.

Why does the Internet giant value it?

Ways to Better realize O2O

Once observers have pointed out sharply, although this area is red-hot, but the commercial WiFi domain is hard to find out such as the independent, subversive strong entrepreneurial team like the millet handset, and the big guy holds hands, becomes these entrepreneurial team to seek the fast development the key choice.

Alipay, who announced a partnership with the Koala network in May this year, said Reiger declined to comment after news that Ali had taken a stake in the tree-bear network through his investment company. And Michael also got the financing of millet, millet shares accounted for about 20%. Some people in the industry to reporters that the current Tencent's group of Groupon to promote and micro-letter bundled Yeahwifi project, and the United States Group network in April to start WiFi projects, many start-up companies Wenfengerdong, have to embrace the thigh.

Some people in the industry said that the field of commercial WiFi investment in a long period of time, marketing, and other services, such as the need for capital and a variety of resources to support, the internet giant familiar with the Internet "to make users scale first" model, will not like other types of investors to demand short-term results. With the endorsement of the internet giants, grassroots entrepreneurs working with giants are likely to be promoted to the top of the industry, leading and developing rules and industry standards earlier.

Zhaoning also admitted to reporters that the commercial WiFi industry water is very deep, "No 15 million yuan to start the money will not come in." He said, the industry is not a pure Internet industry, more like the traditional industry for information transformation, technology research and development capabilities, customized design capabilities, scene PR and ground development capabilities, Advertising liquidity and the ability to perform a strong team, but also familiar with the skills of political and business dealings, not only to sell equipment free of charge, but also to the merchants to subsidize.

"For the internet giants, their layout of the commercial WiFi sector is a better way to achieve O2O," he said. Xu Hao, an analyst at Analysys think-tank, said that because of the high demand for O2O applications, commercial WiFi was a platform for communication between users and merchants, enabling users to better enjoy the customized services that businesses bring.

What is the status of the commercial WiFi industry?

is about to enter the era of melee

Throughout the development of commercial WiFi industry in China, it seems to be a history of "Mantis Oriole". The first is that telecom operators compete with WLAN hotspots in public places, and the big Three are too busy to take this area into account, creating opportunities for grassroots entrepreneurs with a lot of light assets.

As grassroots entrepreneurs burn their money, the internet giants run through capital, jumping over dirty dirty and controlling the paving process from the cloud. For the current commercial WiFi industry killing the severity, zhaoning think half a year may die. "A restaurant owner can meet several business WiFi sales reps a day," he said. "He said," the hot-paved standards include large crowds, closed spaces, a certain amount of consumer power, WiFi-laying scenes conducive to advertising display and user information collection. Now, however, many companies ' WiFi hotspots are worthless, and they are burning investors ' money.

Reiger also admits that there are too many hot money in the industry, but even so, horse-racing is a priority for every player. He expects a company to lay a WiFi hotspot to 200,000 to achieve overall break-even, but at present there is a big gap between home and the line.

"Don't forget that the development of the next three operators will pose a threat to commercial wifi." "As wireless traffic rates get lower, mobile network services provided by operators will also be effective competitors for commercial WiFi," Xu Hao said.

It is noteworthy that there is a class of tools to enable consumers to use free WiFi, they are based on the development of the predecessor, not directly to the business also not to build networks, with users more closely. Mobile apps Wi-Fi partner founder Lianzhiyau, whose business model is to buy traffic to telecom operators, using dynamic distribution technology to help users connect Wi-Fi hotspots for any operator nearby. WiFi partners divide their consumers into paid and free users, with paid users out of the frequency and Wi-Fi, with a membership fee of about 30 yuan a month.

Lianzhiyau revealed that WiFi partners are also talking to a variety of commercial WiFi companies about traffic sourcing. The second half of the company's plan is to create a business system on its platform for a variety of network hotspots and advertisers to provide a liquidity channel.

"Even if there is no equipment production, no advertising efforts, has not formed a scale effect, as long as the focus on the spread of good, into our platform can be realized." "It's worth noting that this is not all good for commercial WiFi players because it will make the melee more intense."

is commercial WiFi reliable?

Security risks should not be overlooked

With the rise of the commercial WiFi market, all kinds of net stolen money incidents were exposed, then the public network is unsafe? Security experts pointed out that such a mixed market, there are some security risks.

Tencent mobile phone Butler security expert Lu Ziaohua told reporters, commercial WiFi itself hardware equipment, software programs and other technologies are now relatively mature, in public places to build a single commercial WiFi technology threshold is very low, as long as the purchase of corresponding equipment software, network services can be built to achieve. At the same time, it is technically easy to build a false WiFi environment in public places to induce user connections. "Just a laptop with a wireless hotspot, or a laptop + router (Wi-Fi, etc.) can be easily implemented." ”

Lu Ziaohua For example, hackers can privately build a false WiFi network in public places, disguised as well-known restaurants, cafes and other wireless network name, through the free Wi-Fi to attract users to connect, phishing way to steal the user's payment account and password. Or through the attack software to record the user's access data and decryption, or the use of mobile phone system vulnerabilities, application vulnerabilities, such as direct access to the user's account password information, or even access to the phone's privacy information and so on.

Leopard security experts said consumers use the web app to be particularly cautious, this type of app unlock WiFi password, the premise is that users share passwords, users share, account and password will be saved in the cloud database, the current type of app in the Hotspot filter and user connections after the security is questionable.

"Users of the use of commercial WiFi security problems, the attribution is not good qualitative, evidence is more difficult, but also lack of relevant policy provisions for effective supervision and management." "Lu Ziaohua said. However, he also stressed that the safety of commercial WiFi is actually a double-edged sword, need to look at objectively, this and computer security risks, it can not stop the use of computers, is similar to the problem.

Experts suggest that when connecting to a public WiFi, it is best to carefully identify the WiFi source, such as a restaurant and other public places to consult the business WiFi account, password, to avoid unauthorized connection may mistakenly into a false WiFi trap. Users should avoid using the public WiFi network directly when making online payment activities such as O2O and so on, and the mobile network can reduce the security risk effectively. At the same time, users are advised to install professional security software on mobile terminals such as mobile phones.

(Responsible editor: Lu Guang)