WiFi into a new battlefield for entrepreneurs and Internet giants

Many smart phone users come to a strange place of consumption basically say a word; "WiFi account number is the number?" Now is the rapid development of mobile Internet, making people online all-weather, fragmented today, people around ubiquitous WiFi has become a new battlefield for entrepreneurs and Internet giants.

This is a mysterious and crazy business space, but also a battlefield filled with bloody and chaotic, Jinghua Times reporter will expose the readers of commercial WiFi grassroots players innovation, melee, fate and worry.

Beijing Times reporter Liao Feng

Who fought commercial WiFi

Beijing white-collar Wang is one of China's hundreds of millions of smartphone users. In these two years, Wang discovered that free WiFi is available in addition to airports, fine restaurants, cafes and shopping malls, many guest houses, small restaurants and even buses and subways. Like most consumers, Wang does not know that the free WiFi used in these public places is collectively referred to as commercial WiFi, and the third WiFi type is tied to home WiFi and corporate WiFi.

For the expansion of free WiFi in public places, Wang is loved. A few years ago, when he first started using smartphones, he also found WLAN hot spots for mobile operators, China Unicom and telecom operators in some supermarkets and airports. However, logging in operators' free wireless networks was too complicated and even costly Hard to log in half a day, so that Wang Tucao, their connection to the operators of WLAN hot spots no more than 10 times.

Wang's experience is the common "pain point" for many smartphone users. As early as five years ago, the three major carriers began laying a large area of ​​WiFi hotspots, which operators call WLAN. A few years later, operators have laid millions of WLAN hotspots. Although smart phones can easily find these hot spots, but operators have invested heavily but did not win the user's applause.

Operators free WiFi is not to force, for many grassroots entrepreneurs provide an opportunity. Like industrious workers, they work hard to fill up a blank space of WiFi and walk between operators, manufacturers, Internet companies, businesses and consumers. Most of them are for merchants, such as Mai Wa Di, Qi Bang information, such as tree bear network, to sell merchants and provide network maintenance and data statistics services, consumers log on their "local conditions" login page to achieve networking; Some entrepreneurs, they are more closely related to consumers, providing products to APP or WeChat public number as a manifestation of consumers through these products networking, eliminating the need for repeated authentication in different locations login process, to achieve "one stop Style "Internet access, these products include WiFi companion, WiFi sharing wizard, WiFi master key, WiFi free pass and so on.

For Internet giants who favor O2O concepts, commercial WiFi has natural exclusivity (the same merchant will not have multiple routers at the same time) and gaining access to its own WiFi system is equal to masking offline O2O access. Looking around the world, overseas Internet giants Google and Facebook are also expanding offline commercial WiFi programs.

WiFi business market, at least operators, grassroots entrepreneurs and the original Internet companies compete.

1 entrepreneurs how to see commercial WiFi?

Or move to the next entrance

The little kings with petty psychology have virtually become the strong backing of numerous entrepreneurs.

Commercial WiFi has now become a "pig on the tuyere," many of the original real estate, mahogany furniture has also been admitted. "Lai Jie emotion. When Lai Jie set up the tree network in 2012, there were no more than 10 commercial WiFi stations nationwide. In the first half of this year, there were at least three or four hundred players in the market.

In the view of Lai Ning and Zhao Ning, co-founder of Maixun's network, many WLAN hotspots of operators are often deployed in venues with smaller commercial value, such as open-air roads. The procedures for accessing the Internet are cumbersome and the duration of free use is limited. Between operators Hot spots are not connected, not attractive to consumers. In addition, some free-to-air WiFi projects on the transport itself are not commercially driven, resulting in ineffective post-maintenance and an overstepped image project. "Operators laying a large number of free WiFi will inevitably reduce the user's mobile traffic, it is difficult to imagine the two left and right hand each other's projects exist in the same system, and now the operator's investment has focused on 4G backbone network construction Up. "Lai Jie said.

There are tens of millions of businesses in the country that have WiFi demand laid, but less than 100,000 are currently estimated by the industry. Zhao Ning told reporters: "Most of the earliest routers should be changed, and public places that have not yet provided public access to the public have a lot of market vacancies. This is a blank that several carriers can not afford to double their investments." At The temptation of this blank, more and more admission of players.

One of the earliest players in the market was Mai Mai Di, set up in 2007 to lay out and maintain WiFi for commercial cafes, bookstores, fast food outlets and airports. Mai Mai Di business model is to find manufacturers to customize the hardware, and then research and development of the design of the router software system, to commercial sales of commercial routers, in the process of maintaining the network WiFi in the WiFi access page to sell advertising and flow diversion to undertake Business and third-party brand master ads.

In the Chinese market, which is accustomed to price war, selling equipment for hard money has become the consensus of commercial WiFi players. Mai Di Mai created advertising model is considered to be the most direct and effective mode of realization, and even some people Mai Mai Di as "Mobile Focus Media." Based on this, at present, when users use commercial WiFi, pop-up welcome page advertisements, login page advertisements and guide APP download channels are frequently seen.

2 commercial WiFi rely on what profit?

Accurate advertising + value-added services

Apart from advertising, commercial Wi-Fi players understand that users can do too much when they access commercial WiFi, especially since this year, providing O2O-based services to businesses based on big data, LBS (location-based services) and Personalized value-added services in the cloud will do a good job, and commercial WiFi also provides "infrastructure" for settling down user data.

In early May this year, Alipay and Kobus network together to promote Alipay free WiFi project, such as Xiao Wang such users later into Alipay free WiFi coverage area, Alipay wallet will receive push messages, click on the message after authentication can connect to the Internet. The Yeahwifi project of Gao Peng of Tencent is similar: Users can access the Yeahwifi Hotspot when entering the merchant store, and users can obtain the password to log in by paying attention to the Yeahwifi public number.

Since login to commercial WiFi requires authentication, the user can enter the phone number, QQ, Weibo and other login, which makes the business greatly reduce the cost of obtaining real users. Lai Jie introduction, as long as users connect to WiFi, means that the user's location information can be tracked. Users enter a mall, even connected to the mall's free WiFi, in theory, can do what the user goes to the counter, can receive the information pushed by businesses, and collect user walking routes and stay in front of the counter and so on.

A case provided by Ali shows that the cooperation between a Teddy Bear and a Tmall brand owner, if the user used the mobile phone to spend on the Tmall brand, when he came to the brand store, the store's wireless router will recognize the user's cell phone , And according to the consumer records of its precision marketing. Tencent's Yeahwifi project using WeChat as an intermediary, users simply concerned about the store public number, after leaving the store can still push new products and offers to their information.

Commercial WiFi can even figure out user groups by analyzing user behavior, and can also make traffic statistics and passenger shopping conversion statistics for businesses. At present, various players are also targeting the mobile payment field. However, Zhao Ning frankly, although with the business into the seemingly is a good profit model, but the offline payment into online payment, will inevitably touch offline POS payment settlement party UnionPay cheese, in addition, guide the user at the merchant WiFi environment to make online payments, the promotion of a high threshold.

Industry pointed out that the frequency of advertising admission push, user experience is also the smoothness of commercial WiFi competition focus, how to choose between user experience and profitability, to the entrepreneurs out of the road problems.

3 Internet giants why value it?

Better ways to achieve O2O

There have been observers sharply pointed out that although this area is extremely popular, but the field of commercial WiFi is very difficult to find such a mobile phone as Xiaomi independence, disruptive entrepreneurial team, and the big hand in hand, as these entrepreneurial teams seeking The key to rapid development.

Alipay in May this year announced the cooperation with the tree after the Bear, there is news that Ali has been through its investment company shares Bear Network, which Lai Jie said no comment. Mai Mai Di also received millet financing, millet equity accounted for about 20%. Insiders told reporters that at present, Tencent's Gaogan buy site vigorously promote the Yeahwifi bundled with the WeChat project, and the United States Mission Network also launched in April WiFi project, many startups anecdote, one after another thigh.

Insiders said that commercial WiFi investment in this area is very long, marketing, post-service needs to have the capital and various resources to support the Internet giant well versed in the Internet, "first big user size and then profit" mode, not like other Type investors require short-term performance. With endorsements from the Internet giant, grassroots entrepreneurs working with big players are likely to be promoted to industry leaders and lead and formulate game rules and industry standards earlier.

Zhao Ning also admitted to reporters, commercial WiFi industry, deep water, "there is no start-up capital of 15 million do not come in." He said that this industry is not purely Internet industry, more like the information technology transformation of traditional industries, technology research and development capabilities, custom design capabilities, the scene of public relations and ground development capabilities, commercial advertising ability and team execution ability stronger, but also deep Understand the skills and business dealings, after not only free to sell equipment, but also subsidies to businesses.

"For the Internet giant, they are laying out a commercial WiFi area that is a better way to implement O2O." Xu Hao, an analyst at Analysys think tank, said that because O2O has a high demand for scene-based applications and commercial WiFi is just getting through A user and merchant communication platform, allowing users to better enjoy the business brought by the customized service.

4 commercial WiFi industry status?

About to enter the melee era

Throughout the history of the development of China's commercial WiFi industry, it seems that it is a history of the expedition of "praying mantis with cicada orchids in the back." The beginning is telecom operators compete for public places WLAN hot laying, the Big Three have no time to take into account in this area, which for many grassroots light asset-based entrepreneurs to create an opportunity.

Just as the grassroots entrepreneurs burn and kill, the internet giants skip the dirty jobs by capitalizing their operations and shop from the cloud. For the current tragedy of the commercial WiFi industry fight, Zhao Ning think half a year may die half. "A restaurant owner can see several commercial WiFi sales representatives a day," he said. "Hotspot valuable standards include large crowd, confined spaces and a population that consumes power. Wi-Fi deployment is good for advertising and user information gathering Etc. However, now many companies WiFi hot spots paved worthless, are investors in vain to burn the money. "

Lai Jie also admitted that too much hot money in this industry, but even so, staking their horse is a priority of all players. He predicts that when a company has set up WiFi hotspots to reach 200,000, it can achieve the overall breakeven. However, there is a big gap between the various lines from this line at present.

"Do not forget, the future development of the three major carriers will be a threat to commercial WiFi." Xu Hao said that with the wireless traffic tariffs getting lower and lower, mobile network operators will provide commercial WiFi services will be effective competitor.

It is noteworthy that there is a class of tools to allow consumers to use free WiFi, which paved the way for the development of predecessors, not directly facing the business nor the network, with the user closer. Lian Zhiyao, founder of mobile application WiFi partner, introduced the business model of purchasing traffic to telecom operators and using dynamic distribution technology to help users connect to the WiFi hotspots of any operator nearby. WiFi companion divides its consumers into paying users and free users, among which paying users are out of frequency, WiFi usage is high, about 30 yuan a month to pay membership fees.

Lian Zhiyao revealed that WiFi partners are also now talking about the cooperation with the various commercial WiFi companies on the flow of procurement. The company plans to build a business system in the second half of the year to provide a platform for various Internet hotspots and advertisers to realize their cash flow.

"Even without the equipment, no advertising effort, no scale effect yet, just focusing on the point and getting into our platform will realize." It's worth noting that this is not true for commercial WiFi players It is a good thing because it will make the melee more intense.

5 commercial WiFi fly it?

Security risks can not be ignored

With the rise of commercial WiFi market, all kinds of rubbish network theft incident was exposed, then the public network in the end security is not safe? Security experts pointed out that such a mixed market, there are some security risks.

Tencent mobile butler security expert Lu Zhaohua told reporters that commercial WiFi itself hardware devices, software programs and other technologies are now more mature in public places to build a single commercial WiFi technology threshold is very low, as long as the purchase of the corresponding device software, network services can build achieve. At the same time, it is technically very easy to create a false WiFi environment in a public place to transmit signals to induce user connections. "You just need a laptop with a wireless hotspot, or a laptop + router (portable WiFi, etc.) for easy access."

Lu Zhaohua, for example, hackers can privately build a fake WiFi network in public places, pretending to be well-known restaurant, cafe and other wireless network name, password-free WiFi to attract users to connect, using phishing way to steal the user's payment account and password. Or through the attack software to record the user's access to data and decryption; or the use of mobile phone system vulnerabilities, application vulnerabilities and other direct access to the user's account password information, or even access the phone's privacy information and so on.

Cheetah security experts said consumers use rub network APP to be particularly careful, such APP unlock WiFi password, the premise is that users share the password, the user shares, the account and password will be saved in the cloud database, the current APP in the hot screening and users After connecting the security are suspicious.

"Users of commercial WiFi security problems arise, the responsibility is not good attribution of ownership, evidence is more difficult, but also the lack of relevant policies and regulations for effective supervision and management." Lu Zhaohua said. However, he also stressed that the security issue of commercial WiFi is actually a double-edged sword, which needs to be viewed objectively. This security risk with the computer can not stop the use of the computer and is a similar problem.

Experts suggest that users connect public WiFi, it is best to carefully identify the source of WiFi, such as restaurants and other public places to consult merchants WiFi account, password, to avoid unauthorized random connection may be strayed into the false WiFi trap. Users in the direct O2O online payment activities, should try to avoid direct use of public WiFi networks, switch to mobile networks can effectively reduce the security risk. At the same time suggest that users install mobile phones and other mobile terminals on the professional security software.