Who's paying for wifi now?

The announcement from the BBC this morning, that it will be making its content available for free over wifi, is an interesting turn around for the wifi provider business model. Whereas it used to be the end user paying for wifi access, it looks like it might increasingly be the content provider, or perhaps even the physical hotspot host itself.

The Cloud is providing the infrastructure for the BBC deal but it is also providing access at McDonald’s restaurants too. In this case Maccy D’s is paying for its customers’ wifi access – presumably because it’s using The Cloud for its own in house communications it got a good deal on reselling access.

It will be interesting to see how many other players follow these leads.