WiFi in this county is an unweeded garden, that grows to seed. If you ask me.
While we were in Seattle, we passed through whole neighbourhoods that were covered by a cloud of free WiFi. The US telecoms companies may not like it, but stuff like this is becoming more common by the day.
(I know that particular example is run by Google, and a lot of people don’t like Google, but you have to admire the initiative, no? And it’s by no means the only such cloud in the US, nor the largest, I’d wager.)
Picture Sunday morning in one of kooky Seattle’s kookier neighbourhoods. We were on our way to the zoo, and stopped for coffee in a smart little cafe on the way. We were about the only people there who didn’t have an open laptop on the table in front of us. Everyone was surfing away in the same way that people in a similar establishment over here would be leafing through the Sunday papers. And all, one could reasonably safely assume, for absolutely nothing.
But here in the UK? You’ll be lucky…
Case in point: recently, I was travelling on a GNER train from London to Durham, and noticed that they offered a WiFi service. I don’t think I had my laptop with me, but if I had I would have been tempted to idle some of the journey away with a quick surf. But for £3.50 for half an hour?! I’d already paid nearly £100 for my train ticket, and they were trying to stitch me – and countless businessmen with genuine uses for their WiFi service – for another uncomfortably large chunk of money.
More recently, we were at Gatwick airport, where a mobile phone operator proudly advertised its WiFi zone. Although I didn’t check it out, I also didn’t assume for a second it was free. I see stickers for WiFi availability in every Starbucks I pass, too, but again – that nagging thought that, if their lattes cost that much, well…
I know it’s rich to expect something for nothing, but those Americans who use free WiFi clouds have to pay at some point down the line, be that signing up for a Google account and being exposed to chillingly targetted advertising, or maybe paying a little more tax for the local government to fund the scheme. Privately funded or publicly funded, the user gives their chunk of flesh in one way or another. So why can’t it be the same here?
The internet, when used well, is a tremendously democratising force, informing and empowering with a speed and a grass-roots loveliness like nothing else for years. There will always be a discriminatory issue in how you get the internet into the hands of those too poor to afford a computer, but why not start pushing the issue of widespread, always-on usage by encouraging city-wide (or region-wide) free WiFi in the UK anyway? To my mind, there’s very little reason for London not to have it already.
Come on, coffee houses, start to make the move, then hopefully a wider change will follow. If a borough council could take up the banner – or an ISP take it up and offer to carry it for them – London could, bit by bit, be the kind of wired city I bet Tony Blair wet-dreams about.
Those who offer access at schools or colleges, or at public libraries, would also benefit. They’d no longer have to sort out their own internet provision – as their establishments would live under the borough-wide cloud – and so that would be one less (presumably quite costly) thing to worry about. And there would be, therefore, improved net access for the poor – along with those who might be able to scrape together enough money for a PC and a wireless adapter, who would have their own access to the always-on net supply.
Sorry. Am I banging a drum? It’s just that it annoys me so. All it would take is for one company or one council to make a move, and they would be the first domino. Soon everyone would live under a happy WiFi cloud, and we’d be one step closer to the purple-haired, silver-suited future that surely is long overdue by now.
