On Techdirt yesterday I came across a bit of a fun story about one traveler’s quest for Wi-Fi in the suburbs. Bouncing back and forth between Panera Bread, which offers free Wi-Fi (and evidently free lattes on Monday– who knew?) and Borders, which are T-Mobile hotspots. I found the experience familiar and a bit on the easy side compared to what I’ve seen.
When I was doing a lot of European travel for business I became pretty much reliant on WiFi for my Internet connectivity. Like all true broadband snobs I consider dial-up a violation of the Geneva Convention. Never mind you find an itemized bill with a phone call for EUR 200 on your bill because you needed to download the latest version (or versions) of the PowerPoint presentations you’re working on with your team. So broadband ubber alles, broadband or bust and all those other fun themes when you’re on the road.
In Europe, however, I find that we don’t have it as good as we do in the US. For one, even in hotels with WiFi, there seems to be a mindset that a body wouldn’t want to use WiFi in your room. So the only point in the hotel that is an access point is the lobby or cafe. This means you’ve got no surfing in your undies, and you’ve got to cope with the smokers in the cafe as well (everybody in Europe smokes, or so it certainly seems). Even when WiFi works in the room, the signal strength tends to be extremely slow.
European users also don’t yet have those safe ports in the storm represented by chain locations that offer Wi-Fi either for free or for pay. It just doesn’t seem to have caught on in the coffee shops as widely there.
And did I mention the price? Holy crap is WiFi expensive in Europe.
Free hotspots are pretty much non-existent, but that’s less of an issue in my mind. That’s because on both sides of the pond I have found the promise of free Internet access to be a mirage. I have never, ever found a free WiFi hotspot where the connection was actually working. Similar to the author of the linked article, asking the shop staff what the issue might be usually doesn’t get you anywhere. Not surprisingly they’re a bit reluctant to let you take a look at the hotspot yourself and see what the problem might be. Some friends of mine report much greater success with free hotspots, but they have just so very rarely worked for me. The one exception to this is the hotspot at CyberStop on 17th Street in Washington. I’m forced to wonder if the promise of a clear revenue stream is the motivator to keep the service up and working. That’s a shame, because as the linked article suggests WiFi users stick around and buy a lot of stuff. I don’t know if I could drink as much coffee as she did, however. Who am I kidding– of course I could!
