Back in 2005 Westfield Americas announced an agreement with WFI, the company that is pretty much the Mercedes Benz of wireless deployments in the world. The agreement was for the deployment of WIFI for both the family of malls tenants as well as for folks like me who have to play bag carrier while my wife shops. I just whip out a laptop and take advantage of the access.
Much to my surprise here in San Francisco at the SF Westfield Center where Nordstroms, Bloomindales and the Container Store serve as anchor tenants, I saw a splash screen that said the $20 a month service being offered by WFI and Westfield, that had been dubbed WFI WiFi was ending on the 27th of January.
Considering how many residents in SF have been waiting for muni WiFi one has to wonder if this is one more barometer of demand and interest, or is this simply WFI getting out of the business due to their sale and spin out of their deployment business last summer to private equity?
Well there’s always Boingo and T-Mobile plus FON and Meraki….here in SF.
Location, location, location. Not enough Andy Abramsons out there cruising the malls to support the capex recovery and opex. The economics of malls also probably prohibited tenants from using the service as their primary internet link, thus eliminating another revenue source.