On Fri, 1 Aug 2003, Westrich, James wrote:
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/69/32116.html
> I owned a Wi-Fi PDA (alas it was stolen recently while on the subway)
> and was surprised at how few free/easy hotspots there are. Most
> shocking was my trip to Seattle at the end of May (great town, but not
> much non Starbucks Wi-Fi--it was easier to find a good free/cheap
> wired cafe than wireless). I found Wi-Fi in airports to be nearly
> useless even in Boston, Seattle, and Chicago.
Why is this surprising? Public Wi-Fi poses a direct threat to the cable companies and telephone companies. Time-Warner and AT&T Broadband have already banned pulic Wi-Fi interfaces to their network. They're trying to strangle it in the cradle, but if the nascent WiFi movement makes any headway you can be certain that the Baby Bells and other carriers will ban public WiFi connections from their networks. Otherwise you might have an alternative, and free, network pop up in cities and they're stranglehold on telecommunications would be no more.