United States: Homeless Turned into Wi-Fi Hotspots

Using homeless people as mobile internet hotspots sparked a heated controversy in the United States.

An initiative organized to benefit the homeless in the United States has had the opposite effect of what was expected and has provoked a controversy outside the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas. A New York branch of the British communication agency, Bartle Bogle Hegarty, wanted to “modernize” the sale of newspapers sold and distributed by the homeless and recruited homeless people to carry wireless Internet terminals on their person.

The story first provoked incredulity on the web then caused numerous reactions, some thinking that the homeless were being exploited for a communication operation and were being transformed into simple utilitarian objects. A blogger at Wired magazine compared the initiative to an idea “out of a darkly satirical science-fiction dystopia.”

Twelve men and one woman walk the streets of Austin, offering participants of the SXSW festival — which blends new technologies, music, and cinema in Austin — to connect to the Wi-Fi with the terminal they carry with them. They are dressed in T-shirts indicating their first name, explaining “I am a 4G Hotspot.”

Bystanders and festival participants, often technophiles that storm the hotspots in the city equipped with smart phones and tablets, can connect by sending a text to a number indicated on the T-shirt and by paying about two dollars for 15 minutes of Internet access. The profits then go to the homeless person.

Considerable criticism has appeared on the Operation Homeless Hotspot blog. “Do you realize you are turning homeless people into simple equipment?” one commented on the Internet. “Reassure me, this is a parody site, a satire, isn’t it?” asked another.*

The first homeless participants involved in the operation, on the other hand, say that they are delighted by their experience that brings them a little bit of money and permits them to meet people.

Saneel Radia, director of the innovation at Bartle Bogle Hegarty Labs in New York, has rapidly tried to defend the initiative, explaining that he wanted to help the homeless by transforming the “dying” model of newspapers sold by the homeless into an innovative form. But some have remarked that homeless people are no longer creators of content that is offered in the newspapers, but are transformed into simple intermediaries for technophiles unable to stay without Internet for more than a few minutes.

*Editor’s Note: These quotes, while accurately translated, could not be verified and are no longer posted on the Homeless Hotspot blog.