Several Meraki customers and industry insiders have e-mailed us to note that last-mile wireless hardware vendor Meraki isn't exactly making friends with some recent business changes. Meraki, a Mountain View, California, startup, said they they wanted to cure the infamous last-mile dilemma on the cheap with Wi-Fi hardware and software based on MIT’s Roofnet project. Last week, they quietly and drastically raised prices while cordoning off features behind pay tiers.

Meraki previously offered robustly featured indoor and outdoor nodes (which act as routers or repeaters) for $50 and $100. The plan was to allow people to become "micro" service providers in regions where cost is an issue or where broadband connections are scarce. The gear quickly appealed to everyone from low-income housing to ISPs looking to add Wi-Fi functionality.

However, without warning, Meraki late last week unveiled a new three-tier pricing system that jacks up the price of hardware as much as three times for some users. The move bumps some of the functionality users were getting on the cheap (user authentication, billing) into higher tiers. That's obviously annoying users in the Meraki forums who say they've been blindsided by the changes. The new tiers as outlined by the company's FAQ:One Meraki client tells us that not only are they charging more and cordoning off functionality, they're also now forcing ads on all hardware users and keeping that revenue for themselves. "They've even forced the SSID, 'Free the net' on everyone," says one annoyed customer.

While Meraki's gear left beta last February, their billing systems only recently left beta -- and the company apparently decided there was significantly more cash to be made. That's a tough pill to swallow for a number of individuals and outfits that had already purchased gear, planned networks and pitched said plans to local apartment complexes, towns, customers or partners.