Internet access as utility?

Internet access is something you need more and more, everywhere, anytime. You need it in the office, in internal and external meetings, on business trip, at home and even on holiday. Being cut off from internet and e-mail is being cut off from society. It had become just as bad as not having a telephone. Internet is becoming a utility like water, electricity, gas or telephone.

One would think that after so many years of mobile phone networks, ADSL and WLAN that internet access is easy. One has to admit it has become easier than a few years ago. But easy?

First let us take an average hotel or guest house. Look at all the problems. The signal may be too weak in your room. You may need a WEP or WPA key and your computer may not recognise it. Then you usually need a username and a password. Either the hotel is expensive and the internet access will be extremely expensive (at least 10 Euro per hour on your VISAcard). Or the hotel is cheap and the landlord doesn't know anymore how to generate you a password. You spend ages at the reception desk until the sole person who can help you appears or doesn't appear. The hotel leaflet contains all information you need, except the way to get access to the internet. If you were lucky to get internet access, your webmail or any other application may suffer from an overprotective firewall installed at the hotel's premises.

Now that should not be a problem if you have a mobile phone network data card? Just try it. First, you will go bankrupt if you use it abroad. They charge you 'only' 3.63 Euro/Mbyte, but they will charge you a new Megabyte as seen as you have requested the first bit of that Megabyte. Secondly, you will buy a 3G-4G card and be unfortunately just out of range of the 3G network. As a result, you can download at GPRS speed of 56 kbits/s, something like a good old telephone line speed. Good luck if you happen to have received a few Mbytes in your e-mail box or if you would have liked to watch television on your mobile.

And yet, it seems easy...Why not equip every building with easily accessible Wifi or WIMAX? If internet access is just like water and electricity, every hotel room should offer it, even without submitting a form or asking for your VISA card? Suppose the hotel manager would have to generate you a password if you needed to use electricity for your shaver or your hairdryer? Indeed, you could use the electricity for malicious purposes, so why not register first? It shows how paranoid our society has become.