Give Me Wireless. Pleeeeeease!
Posted on January 14th, 2008 by Simon Chen
I don’t get this.
Maybe retailers, restaurants, coffee shops and any other business who have direct face to face with humans are all scared. Of what I’m not sure.
It just staggers me in this day and age, and with this thing called the internet gaining momentum by the second, that wireless is not commonplace.
During the last month, I’ve been away on holiday and visited plenty of cafes, pubs and restaurants. Not one had free wireless. And the place we rented for the Xmas period didn’t have wireless either.
Some of the cynics out there might say - “get a life, you don’t need wireless at the local coffee shop, bakery, supermarket or restaurant or when you’re on holiday”.
Why not?
And what gets up my frock even more, is that when you do find a wireless network, capitalism well and truly takes hold, and the owners of the establishment want to charge you the equivalent of $15,800 per minute to use the damn thing. Or something like that.
Look, it should be free. Absorb the pitiful charge (like $80-100 bucks a month) or simply charge more for something else.
McDonalds, Starbucks, independent cafe owners, bars and pubs - why don’t you do a test and see what happens to customer satisfaction if you offer it for free for a month. And Qantas, take some of that billion dollars you made this year and flood the freakin’ airport and lounges with the stuff. With your buying power, surely it can’t be that hard.
Unfortunately for those technophobes, purists or members of any movement that protects small rodents that live in even smaller ponds, the internet is not going to go away. We need it. Just like mobile phones.
You can turn it off when you die. But for the time being, let use it and access it everywhere we need.
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January 14th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Couldn’t agree more, after moving back to oz from the US earlier this year I am constantly flummoxed by the lack of free wireless access in cafes and bookstores and well - anywhere really. I guess you could say I have been pouting having become good and spoiled by the ready access of access in every cafe, bookstore, henhouse and public space in the US…
come on - time to wake up and get with the 21st century!
January 14th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Simon,
Could not agree more- it’s insane that a Telstra wireless hotspot is 20c a minute plus connection fee. That is more than walking into a ‘net Cafe. (I just checked it out and net cafes are about $4-$5 an hour- some include a latte at that price. SHEESH!)
see:
http://www.telstra.com.au/wirelesshotspots/pricing.htm
I see a parallel with the New York Times opening up/removing their subscriber only site areas as it showed that they would make more money from advertising if they opened up their access than by subscriptions.
So if you own a cafe, offer free access to your customers (having it WEP protected is fine- have a new password every week!) with every purchase. You’ll make more back from doing that then you’ll lose!
Tom