I’ve always been fascinated with Starbucks and not because they serve up a decent cup of coffee! Their organizational philosophy, business model and more have been critiqued, examined, and observed by countless of people.
One of the things that they’ve always been big on is being the “3rd Place” in terms of a person and the places they frequent the most (home and work being the first two). They want to be the third place that people spend most of their time.
Offering free WiFi without forcing a registration, seems so natural of a move and when they announced it via Twitter I wasn’t surprised:
What would it look like if the local ministries and churches began offering free WiFi to anyone who would drive up, without forcing them to register or even have them “buy” anything?
What do you think would happen? One thing is for sure – I’d love to see it happen more often!
I think it would very handy some situations, but it could also be very distracting. The Pastor is teach a sermon about listening to God Word and instead I’m checking out ChurchDrop
We have free WiFi in our church building, must have been last year that I installed it. WPA is turned on but the password is advertised around the building. No registration is required, just connect and go.
Not really sure how much it’s used, but useful to have.
I think that would kill many churches. Why would you need WiFi during a church sermon? That will distract most of the youth, especially in the US, since most of them have iPhones, iPods, and other WiFi stuff.
YouVersion Live? Looking up scripture? Taking notes on Google Apps? Tweeting interesting quotes?
If the church also offers live streaming, people could watch the live stream of the service, while in the service. I’d probably do that just to say that I did.
I think free WiFi in church is a two edged sword.
1. It would encourage people to use it and the no-pay is good but….
2. Do you want folks using it during the sermon when they should be listening and be absorbing the message. I find may people already are doing too much “multi-tasking” when they should be focused on one thing at a time. Ok Ok I know that they can be on their smartphones already without the free WiFi – but should we really be encouraging bad habits! I just remember a great “turn-off your cell” pre-service slide I saw once. “Please turn off your cellphones – God doesn’t need them to reach you!”
About time!!!!!!!!!
we have free wifi – broadcasting – no password – no reg.
and… we encourage people to use their devices – google stuff, tweet, etc.
We have free wifi up at our building. No pw, no reg, just go for it.
It’s actually more powerful than our “office” wi-fi, I use the free one when I’m working up on site, lol.
I would be curious as to how to successfully implement a wireless network on a church’s campus. Like a list of hardware used, software to manage connection and make it so the network is broadcasted as a single id .. and not wireless1, wireless2, wireless3 … Maybe itemize the total costs associated …
Looking to do it now for @FBCKM and would love some help!
You can leverage linux based routers and run DD-WRT, or Tomato for multiple SSID broadcast. You could then use VLANs to separate a secure network, and an open network for the public. Then at the gateway, split the vlans into their respective networks. Giving you a site wide public and secure network so your visitors still get their wifi, and your networked resources are behind WPA2, or other encryption.
Currently our solution is a single AP, running DD-WRT with QoS enabled for bandwidth throttling to ensure primary network services aren’t interrupted.
Heh, I’d be surprised if most churches DON’T offer free wifi, albeit unintentionally.
lol, my thoughts exactly
We have offered free wifi at our church for the last three years and it has been one of the best things that I have helped accomplish since joining the staff there. The number of people that have come in that otherwise would not have spent much time at our facility has been quite impressive. One an comes in and does conference calls twice a week so he can be near his child at our school. Another woman came in and did all the studying/writing for her doctorate. Its enabled our sunday school classes and worship services to use live data from the web in our classes and services. There has been no downside for us. Its bandwidth that otherwise would be lying dormant that we can offer as a way to bring others in to our loving church family environment.
To be in compliance with federal law we have a wpa password, but the pword is posted lots of places. We also use meraki hardware and software to enable cheap and effective management for us and specific content filtering to keep adult content out.
What federal law? (said the clueless administrator)
We are wide open. Churches that don’t provide WiFi drive me crazy…especially ones that have a website, offer online giving, want to connect with people through Twitter/Facebook…why do that if you’re not going to offer people access to it?
If churches that don’t offer wifi drive you crazy, what about a church with: no wifi, no website, no high-speed internet, no social networking, and little to no cell service?
Church known for generosity?
or for restricting?
Let’s be known for generosity…..
It seems that most churches offer free public wifi. Now if we could get them to make better coffee it would be a beautiful thing.
But the combination of the two would be awesome.
So inspired we’re offering it at our church cafe! http://www.c3hh.com.au/
that’s awesome!
Does anyone know if there is a service we can use to do this, like starbucks has?
We want to have a landing page with our info – just like starbucks.
anyone?