This week, Cringely talks about how Wal-Mart could use their massive store count (nearing 4000) as platforms from which they could launch WiMax service, effectively blanketing the country with high-speed wireless data services, and in so doing, bring in another $50 billion or so in revenue.
I think this is a sweet idea. I mentioned a similar tactic a few months ago when I decided that they needed to offer mail services. I’ve since expanded this idea to conclude that Wal-Mart could pretty easily compete with most package services (DHL, FedEx, UPS). Imagine if you could walk into Wal-Mart, do your shopping, then run through a shipping lane that would allow you to have those packages delivered to your family across the country. Especially important at this time of year, and it wouldn’t cost Wal-Mart much, as they don’t actually have to ship that package – they could just transfer goods frome one store to another, shuffling nothing more than paperwork.
Of course, offering a shipping service for other packages would be pretty cool too, and likely could be done pretty easily. All those trucks that deliver stuff to stores surely have enough room that they could handle a few extra packages in them. Not to mention that if you’re using Wal-Mart as your depot for these packages, you get people into the store to pick it up and you end up selling them something else! They could probably offer shipping services for free, or charge a bit more if you’d like home delivery. Roughly equivalent to an advertising-based model, where you get ads with the otherwise free version, or you pay a bit more not to be bothered. Wish I had a distribution network and a few thousand locations across the country.