What is the craziest thing you’ve done to get free WiFi? Park outside a public library to get a signal? That’s nothing.
What about turning homeless people into living breathing WiFi Hotspots? Even though you can get arrested for it, there’s always the option of hanging around a coffee shop and lifting free WiFi without ever plopping down $5.00 for an iced latte. My personal favorite WiFi theft story is a friend of mine who used to lease apartments and would find out codes from residents so she could use their signals.
Of course, each of these options are slightly illegal or degrading, so Terra.com, a Spanish language internet company has finally provided a solution to the free WiFi dilemma and it won’t cost you diddly squat … well, maybe just a squat.
Terra has hooked up with 10 parks in Mexico City to promote a product called POO WIFI, where you can literally earn you way to free wireless service with the help of man’s best friend. POO WiFi features receptacles around city parks where you can drop off dog turds in exchange for free WiFi minutes. The larger the poo, the more minutes you get.
So if you have a Great Dane, you’ll be downloading movies from Netflix; if you have a Chiuaua you might get to check your email. Once your turd has been turned to time, you can just log on near any of the various dog-bone looking Internet hotspots located around the park. The ‘instructional video’ provided by Terra is hilarious and rather disturbing at the same time. Would you really massage your dog’s bowels to check your fantasy team?
Now I know what you’re thinking. What’s to keep people from just throwing trash into the POO WiFi just to get free minutes? Or using their own … materials to finish up that last intense battle of Words with Friends for free? Mexico City has a little bit of a trash problem. It is routinely cited as one of the dirtiest cities in the world above and beyond pollution. If free WiFi can get people to actually dump trash and feces rather than just throw it on a pile on the street corner that would be a civil service success story for the capital city.
From an environmental and policy perspective, POO WiFi is a big leap forward: it’s cheap, recyclable and constantly renewable. We should start adopting this technology as much as possible in the United States. There are already examples in the U.S. of poop powered lights in dog parks, cars that run on sewage and houses that run on cow farts. And why be limited like Mexico to offering free WiFi minutes? Why not minutes on your phone? Or gas discounts or straight cash money. I mean, philosophically, wouldn’t you love to live in a country where you’re actually compensated for giving a s**t?
This article originally appeared online at Politic365.com.