Free WiFi

A few weeks ago my wife and I drove up to northern California to visit my daughter at Berkeley. Since # 2 daughter likes to think she is descended from royalty (must be several generations back), she insisted that the next morning we go to a little French restaurant called Le Bateau Ivre for breakfast. Although the service was pretty slow, the food was excellent and reasonable so they got two out of three right. But what impressed me most (note: this will reveal a lot about my priorities) was the fact that they had a sign up that announced free WiFi access.

When we were finished eating and I knew we probably had about 10 minutes to kill before our waiter returned with the credit card, I decided to walk over and talk to the owner about the WiFi. What I learned is that the free access had not been up for too long, but they were already quite pleased with the business it brought in. They have two transmitters which serve about 50 tables inside and outside and the owner claims that they don’t get many people who abuse the free service.

No doubt the reason this caught my attention was the fact that I had just, a few weeks before, mentally added up all the money I pay each month for stuff like internet, satellite, cellphones, land lines, etc. Yes, I know that there are a growing number of large hotel chains who cater to businessmen that now offer free internet hookup in the rooms, but here was a small restaurant that was offering the same thing. It was a ray of hope - a sign of good things to come. I’m sure we will always pay for high speed access at home because it will carry an increasingly larger and larger amount of data, but public access for undemanding tasks? - that should be free.

Patience....