Guillaume on Neale

David Neale, Chief Futurist at Telus, made a very pertinent observation in his recent visit to class. Discussing the ubiquitousness of mobile devices today, Neale suggested that “people see no more value to mobility; it should just exist, for free, as a standard.” His observation is highly pertinent in how we conceive of the value of products and the consequences of those judgments.
The value of mobility is often forgotten. However, it is perhaps justifiably forgotten. Whenever I turn on my computer anywhere on McGill’s campus, I am automatically connected to a powerful WiFi network that services all of my communication needs. Anytime I need to access such a network when off-campus or away from home, any number of coffee shops and restaurants are ready to assist me in whichever city I might be, in exchange for the price of a cup of tea and cookie. In the latter case, I am not paying for the right to access mobility, but rather the snack; the WiFi access is an added “free” perk. In many ways, the current set-up for mobility teaches me, the consumer, that mobility ought be free, and that any costs associated with the service are best covered through other, indirect fees levied through the sale of other products or services (namely, tuition fees and cookies, in this case).
Yet, every now and then, there some environments which shock me back into a reality where WiFi and mobility are not free. Airports are a great example. Whenever I am sitting in Montreal-Trudeau, Toronto-Pearson, or Edmonton International, I know that Wi-Fi connectivity will cost me. However, because of the ubiquitousness of such networks everywhere else in my life, shelling out 10$ for an hour’s worth of connectivity strikes me as a bad deal, as somehow being vastly overpriced; consequently, I almost never purchase such a service. The fact that other airports do offer me free connectivity - Ottawa, Calgary, and Vancouver among others - reduces the “value” of Wi-Fi mobility for me in airports generally, such that I’m implicitly being trained to believe that Wi-Fi “should just exist, for free, as a standard” in every airport I visit. I am now disappointed when airports choose not to follow this obvious “standard.” It is ironic that something of such high utility has such a low financial value. “Free” access to a service trains the consumer to believe the service should always be free, regardless of the value of the service to the consumer. Therein lies the true benefit, but also the critical danger; free access makes a service widely desirable, but necessarily jeopardizes its profitability in some of its most expected spheres of application.
Neale’s observation also offers an interesting parallel to music downloading. Indeed, the ideology that music “should just exist, for free, as a standard” has been quoted often as a reason for the proliferation of downloading over the past decade. The parallel to Wi-Fi reveals again that a potential solution to the problem then seems to be not to charge for the music itself, but rather charge for services associated with gaining access to the music, or allowing one to enjoy the music within a better context - the proverbial “tea and cookies” of the music industry. Only time will tell whether such business models are viable, however.