I'm here in Adelaide Australia today, and this friendly Radisson hotel has wifi for $20 an HOUR or $.50 per minute for Ethernet ($25 max per day thankfully). On top of that though they charge $.20 per MB over 50 MB per day. Last time I was in Sydney I was able to grab my e-mails with a Latte for only $15 for an hour... Crazy.
In Switzerland a few weeks back, Swisscom charged something like $10 for 30 minutes... And yes McDonalds had it free there too until the end of February, so it was cheaper to get dinner and get online than just the Internet at the hotel! Swisscom had the same service at WSIS, where I had blogged about the fact that Internet for a week ($120 or so I think) was more than some of the African youth attendees earned in over a month. But in general, reflecting on it all, it is still a major convienence to have in-room / in-hotel Internet and I think to a large degree, hotels deserve to earn a good amount for Internet, especially since it's usually a third-party provider taking a majority cut (competition can't come soon enough). I hope eventually the North American trend will catch on worldwide -- high-speed Internet as a competitive advantage -- free or reasonable ($5-15/night)... I will never go to a hotel without high-speed Internet if there is one with around... I'm sure given a few more years, the trend will catch on. Of course, there's always the alternative of roaming down the streets with the laptop which I tend to do sometimes... A quick download of the e-mails courtesy of someone's unconfigured or unsecured linksys router... To return the favour I leave my home access point open for the street-roamers in Toronto. That's my $4.50 Australian, -- Michael Michael Furdyk Director of Technology TakingITGlobal.org -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andy Carvin Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2005 11:33 AM To: The Digital Divide Network discussion group Subject: [DDN] Parisian Wi-Fi Lessons Ever since arriving in Paris yesterday, I've been baffled by the state of wi-fi here. When I checked into my hotel, I found a little wi-fi sign on the counter, which was good news, since I selected the hotel partially because Hotels.com said the place had wireless Internet access. But then I turned on my computer and opened my Web browser, only to discover that the hotel had the nerve of charging 25 euros a day for the privilege. That's more than 30 bucks to us currency-challenged Americans, which is sheer lunacy. So I briefly sunk into a cyber funk and wondered if I'd be able to tolerate being offline. Of course, the answer was no, so I started to download emails from my cell phone. Granted, I bought the phone for that very purpose, but the download charges while traveling international can be a couple of cents a byte, and that can add up when you get as much email as I do. This afternoon, though, while I was strolling down Boulevard St-Germain on the way back to my hotel, I noticed a little sign in the window of the local MacDonalds. "WI-FI ICI," it said. And below that, in somewhat smaller print, "gratis." Yep, Ronald McDonald has gotten into the municipal wi-fi business -- at least for a few days. It turns out the wi-fi is part of a promotion announcing wi-fi at French McDonalds, but it's free only for a short time. Fortunately, I'm only here for a short time as well, so that suits me just fine. So in between touring the sites and soaking up the Parisian joie de vivre, I'll be soaking up the bandwidth at the local Mickey Dee's..... -andy -- ----------------------------------- Andy Carvin Program Director EDC Center for Media & Community acarvin @ edc . org http://www.digitaldivide.net http://www.tsunami-info.org Blog: http://www.andycarvin.com ----------------------------------- _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message. _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
