Free WiFi is in trouble, experts predict: it may disappear in the future

According to media reports, due to high investment, low returns, and the impact of speed increase and fee reduction, free WiFi in public places is becoming less and less useful. So, as communication operators' Internet speeds become faster and their fees become lower, is there still a need to continue building free WiFi?

Data or WiFi? Consumers have the final say

Whether free WiFi in public places is worth continuing to build requires consideration of both current needs and future trends. Currently, as telecommunications operators increase their traffic discounts, more and more people believe that free WiFi is dispensable.

A citizen in Fuzhou said: "I know there is WiFi, but I have never used it. Because we have a lot of mobile data now, I will use my own data if it is enough."

However, the amount of data usage varies from person to person. If you often watch videos online on your mobile phone, you may have a real need for additional data.

A Beijing citizen said: "I use about 2G of data a month, but I exceed it almost every month because I have no idea about how much data I use. In this case, if I see this kind of WiFi, to be honest, I want to try it. If I can connect to the Internet, wouldn't it be very convenient?"

Free WiFi: Big Data Collector

Ma Jihua, a communications industry expert, said that free WiFi has gradually been given the function of collecting big data.

Ma Jihua pointed out: "It can obtain the customer's location information and collect user information, which still has certain value from the perspective of big data."

This is one of the reasons why the government is so enthusiastic about free WiFi. Local governments believe that this is part of a smart city, and through data collection and mining, better services can be provided for people's livelihood, public safety and urban life. For example, the "Smart City Development Plan" released by Lanzhou, Gansu Province, proposes to provide free WiFi in more public areas; Jining, Shandong Province has just listed this work as one of the "Ten Practical Things for the People".

Experts predict: WiFi will be phased out in the future

However, the reporter noticed that the three major operators have already started to deploy in the field of big data, so another voice believes that the collection of big data can be completed by communication operators. At present, it is more important to reduce traffic costs by promoting speed increase and fee reduction and marketization of the communication industry, rather than repeatedly building network facilities. Zeng Jianqiu, director of the Information Economy and Competitiveness Research Center of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, said that the future trend is that WiFi will be out of history.

Zeng Jianqiu said: "Data traffic is actually a transitional concept. Now everyone is still talking about data traffic, but with the development of 3G, 4G, and 5G, its technology, speed, and bandwidth are strong enough, and the charges are low enough. Then, people can make calls and use their mobile phones whenever they want, and people will ignore or forget what the so-called WiFi is."

The development direction of free WiFi: from pre-payment to post-payment

At present, there is no unified official attitude on whether to continue to promote the construction of free WiFi. Yu Jianing, director of the Industrial Economics Research Institute of the Information Center of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, believes that for a certain period of time, WiFi will still be an effective extension and supplement of the operator's network, and the operating platform of free WiFi can pass on the traffic fees to third parties to reduce costs.

Yu Jianing said: "If we want to reduce consumers' network access costs, one of the important ways is to change from a pre-paid model to a post-paid model, that is, from charging users to charging Internet content providers. In the WiFi model, the post-flow charging model is not tried very often, but I believe that the post-flow charging model may become more popular in the future."