In a world where mobile internet is becoming as available as air and water, I think it’s time to enforce the same standards for internet as for air and water. When a place offers wifi for free, they ought to be required to provide a minimum of quality internet service (e.g. a target minimum latency and uptime). How is it that I can run a cheapo off-the-shelf wireless access point at home over shitty DSL (with no additional tweaking) and still get better service than this coffee shop can offer during their mid-morning customer lull?
It’s called “trying” people – look it up.
2 thoughts on “An end to shitty public wifi”
Clearly you need MiFi. Google it if you haven’t heard of it.
Hey Eric,
Yeah, no doubt. So, “Mifi” is an instance of what is called “tethering”. Basically, the idea is not new or radical at all. Your mobile phone has a cable that connects it to your laptop, for instance by USB (as on a Blackberry or iPhone). The laptop just needs software on the phone that connects it to the mobile wireless network of the phone. Tethering is an old idea, being sold by these companies like it’s new. The reason they are doing this is because they normally mark tethering as a violation of your contract; now, they can sell it like a service.
Here again, Verizon is ahead of the curve. On AT&T, you have to jailbreak the iPhone to do tethering because they disallow it with any device, including my Blackberry.