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This device can apparently 'charge with internet' at home from my router, then allow me to connect with my phone while I'm out and about. It claims to work on planes and subway trains too.

In the FAQs they make reference to a SIM chip in the device, but this still wouldn't let it work on planes etc.

Have you seen those "Portable battery chargers for smartphones" ?

Well the idea of the device is based on it , but the difference here is the internet part.

Instead of charging the device from pc with electricity you will charge our device ( WiFiEX) with internet from your home-wifi.

To put it bluntly is there any way this could work both economically and technically, or is this a scam?

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fredley
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    That has to be a parody of dubious crowdsourcing campaigns, it's just too far out there. – Mad Scientist Jul 07 '14 at 13:41
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    I can only charge it with 10GB of internet? But it says if I charge it with more MBs, it's *faster*. I want to go faster than 10GB. – Is Begot Jul 07 '14 at 13:42
  • I presume it's a cache: - Connect your charger - Specify which resources (e.g. web site URLs and/or movies) you want to charge - Charger downloads/stores the web sites - You can access the cached data via WiFi. – ChrisW Jul 07 '14 at 14:36
  • Downloading content overnight from popular or user-selected websites, e.g. CNN, YouTube, etc., overnight and serving it up later from a small device is certainly possible. It isn't magic, though. It won't send emails or fetch new content without infrastructure that you could use in traditional ways. – Paul Jul 07 '14 at 14:40
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    A cache still doesn't explain "***How fast is WifiEx?** It depends on how many megabytes of internet you charged in the device.*" I assume it would transfer data from the cache at a rather constant speed, regardless of how "full of internet" it was. – Is Begot Jul 07 '14 at 14:45
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    It is full of something alright... marketing impossible products to the ignorant has a long history older than snake oil. – Paul Jul 07 '14 at 14:46
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    "Never underestimate [the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet#Non-fiction) hurtling down the highway." – ChrisW Jul 07 '14 at 14:50
  • Off hand this does kind of sound like they are caching pages for you to read offline, but having read the site I suspect there is a language barrier here as well. It seems like this is supposed to be an improvement on an [Internet Key](https://www.vodafone.com.mt/vodafoneinternetkey). – rjzii Jul 07 '14 at 14:54
  • @ChrisW Or carrier pigeon, which is [faster than broadband in some areas](http://www.cnet.com/news/carrier-pigeon-faster-than-broadband-wings-beat-web/). – rjzii Jul 07 '14 at 14:55
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    @Fabian: this is parody: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/324283889/potato-salad, WiFiEX looks more like a scam. Giant red flag would be the fact that they are disabling or deleting any user comments. – vartec Jul 07 '14 at 15:41
  • If you ignore the stuff about "charging", there's a sim card and some kind of router, so it could be creating a simple proxy on your home network and using cellphone networks to access the proxy? But I can see no benefit in doing that, since you could just connect to the cellphone network instead. – Yamikuronue Jul 07 '14 at 16:56
  • "(After you fill up the 2 Gigabytes storage for internet the software will notify you to restart the PC and after you run the software next time you will get storage for up to 10 Gigabytes . )" Reboots fix everything – msmucker0527 Jul 07 '14 at 20:41
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    Where's the Report Scam button on IndieGoGo's site? – Dan Is Fiddling By Firelight Jul 07 '14 at 20:46
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    Don't worry, "[All campaigns and contributions go through a fraud review, which allows us to catch any and all cases of fraud](https://web.archive.org/web/20130911201538/http://support.indiegogo.com/entries/20501033-How-Does-Indiegogo-Deal-With-Fraudulent-Campaigns-)". That probably why they have no "Report Scam" button. There are no scams on indiegogo. Ever. They're perfect. – David Schwartz Jul 07 '14 at 21:20
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    @DavidSchwartz - They actually do. Down towards the bottom is a link to report "Prohibited Content", which includes scams. – Bobson Jul 07 '14 at 21:57
  • @Bobson That link just goes to the terms of use - there's no method from there to report the project. You can use their contact form to report it, though. – Adam Davis Jul 07 '14 at 22:45
  • @AdamDavis - They have a link to that there too. I actually did report it that way. I'll post if anything comes of it. Maybe I ought to have linked to Compro01's answer... – Bobson Jul 07 '14 at 22:48
  • @Bobson I also reported it and linked back here. I think it is a pretty clear case of a bad project. – Dennis Jaheruddin Jul 08 '14 at 09:27
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    **Please avoid speculative answers** – Sklivvz Jul 08 '14 at 09:37
  • After reviewing the source, it seems that the claim is not notable, nor it is clearly specified. – Sklivvz Jul 08 '14 at 09:44
  • @Sklivvz You seem to have put an answer post-notice on my question! – fredley Jul 08 '14 at 10:04
  • @fredley, heh, no that's a question banner as far as I can tell. – Sklivvz Jul 08 '14 at 10:36
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    Here's the response from Indigogo: "Thank you for sharing your concern with us and your comprehensive explanation. Campaign owners on Indiegogo are required to adhere to our Terms of Use (http://www.indiegogo.com/about/terms). We are reviewing this campaign and will be in touch with any questions. Thank you again for taking the time to get in touch with us and for helping to keep Indiegogo a safe and secure platform." – Adam Davis Jul 08 '14 at 13:51
  • I got the same response as @AdamDavis. – Bobson Jul 08 '14 at 14:27
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    The campaign was taken down sometime between 23:21Z and 00:37Z. The most recent comment before then was "Great idea! I wish I thought of it!" from [this guy](https://www.indiegogo.com/individuals/8136279). – deltab Jul 10 '14 at 02:06
  • Not only is it taken down, but it now can't even be accessed via the original link. – Bobson Jul 29 '14 at 14:19
  • @Bobson Mission success – fredley Jul 29 '14 at 14:28

1 Answers1

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Working my way through the broken English, they don't seem to mean "charging" as with electricity, but rather just using that as an analogy.

As far as I can tell, this is how it works

  • You connect the WifiEX device to your home network
  • Through their satellite network, other people connect through your device (and all other such devices currently in "at home" mode), using it as an interface between their satellite network and the internet at large, in a peer-to-peer arrangement. While it's doing this, you build up a credit, which they're calling a "charge", up to a maximum of 10GB.
  • When you disconnect it from your home network, it then switches to "mobile" mode and you connect through their satellite network to others devices for internet and use your built up credit ("charge") to have internet on the go.

I do not pretend to understand how they think this kind of system is at all feasible. Mobile satellite internet systems do exist (e.g. Iridium's GO! ), but the client-side hardware for that is about 3 times this thing's price, and I can't even find out what the actual service costs, though I suspect it comes in around "You don't even want to know", and the main cost on such a system is the satellite network (putting stuff in orbit is decidedly not cheap. Putting a single Iridium satellite into orbit costs in the vicinity of $13 million US. And Iridium's network has 72 (66 active and 6 spares) such satellites. For those playing at home, that's nearly a billion dollars in launch costs, not counting the cost of the satellites themselves), not the downlink. And they're not charging for the satellite bandwidth (which networks operators like Iridium charge lots for, as they need to make back the aforementioned network costs. Just voice appears to cost somewhere around $0.83/minute.), but rather only using customers to save on their downlink bandwidth.

Personally, it smells like a scam and going by the decided lack of funding they're getting, pretty much everyone else in the world also thinks so.

fredley
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Compro01
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  • I see no evidence that others use your device. IMO the device is a cache: you charge it (i.e. preload it with data), take it with you, and access it via Wifi. Iff you request data that's not on the device then the device has a SIM card to get ordinary cellular data (or extraordinary cellular data if that's all that's available). – ChrisW Jul 07 '14 at 15:22
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    @ChrisW - Your theory of it being a cache doesn't align with their talk about the device connecting to satellites. – Compro01 Jul 07 '14 at 15:26
  • My guess is that it will use its SIM to connect to the phone network (or, [if you're on an airplane, satellite network](http://computer.howstuffworks.com/in-flight-mobile-phone-services.htm)), iff the requested data isn't cached on the device. – ChrisW Jul 07 '14 at 15:52
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    Worth noting that it's using "Flexible Funding", which means every dollar they raise is theirs, scam or not. – Bobson Jul 07 '14 at 16:11
  • In the [comments](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/wifiex#comments) they note that the retail price of this is $39 thats MUCH less than 1/3rd Iridum's price point. Sounds scammy. – crthompson Jul 07 '14 at 16:45
  • It's mentioned in the updates tab that this somehow involves a SIM card and " one more device which will be shipped with the WiFiEX , it will look like router , but it will be used for sending the internet from your home to the WiFiEX device. " – Yamikuronue Jul 07 '14 at 16:52
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    I found a [reseller](http://www.roadpost.com/Iridium-Phone-Subscriptions-P705C280.aspx) advertising $1.39/minute for iridium data. [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_Communications) indicates that while compression is used automatically, the raw data rate is only 2.4k. "You don't even want to know" sounds about right. – Dan Is Fiddling By Firelight Jul 07 '14 at 17:05
  • @ anonymous guy who suggested the edit, I meant the broken English on the Indiegogo project page, not the question. – Compro01 Jul 07 '14 at 17:56
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    @ChrisW they claim that it will work even on the airplane. If it is pure cache then you won't get anywhere. Want to Google? Nope, not cached. The best you can cache is pages from sites you visit regularly based on your history. It will be awful browsing experience. Only preloaded content, no dynamic sites, no IMs. It is either scam or people behind it have no idea what they are doing. – Andrey Jul 07 '14 at 21:26
  • @Andrey, I believe your point to be the most correct. The only way they can do what they claim is through caching. It would be a miserable surfing experience. – crthompson Jul 08 '14 at 05:04
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    I am dissatisfied with this answer. Firstly, it speculates what might be meant, without showing that this interpretation is correct. Secondly, if this interpretation was correct, it seems likely that the web-site would have a very different message and that the updates would have been clarified rather than made it more murky. This answer hasn't ruled out that the claim is technological gibberish, acting as a Rorschach test for technologists to project what they must really mean. – Oddthinking Jul 08 '14 at 09:29