more on Some Cafe Owners Pull the Plug on Lingering Wi-Fi Users

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Glenn Fleishman <glenn () glennf com>
Date: June 14, 2005 1:43:57 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] more on Some Cafe Owners Pull the Plug on Lingering  
Wi-Fi Users


Joseph Lorenzo Hall <joehall () gmail com> wrote:

> > But lately, the subject of Wi-Fi - specifically, the cafe's move to
> > cut back on the free Wi-Fi connection it provides for patrons'
> > Internet use - has been impossible to avoid. "It's distracting," said
> > Jen Strongin, a co-owner.
>
> A good friend, Sean Savage, was quoted in this story and found this
> story (and a few others in the same vein) to be making a mountain out
> of a molehill.  Specifically, this slight trend to throttle WiFi in
> cafes is wholly insignificant compared to the background movement of
> cafes in general offering free WiFi... where the equilibrium will end
> up, no one knows. More at Sean's blog:

I'm the author of that NY Times story and earlier coverage. You're  
misquoting Sean's blog entry. He wrote:

"The other articles, particularly the New York Times piece, were more  
balanced and better informed about this."

I "broke" this story on my own Web log, wifinetnews.com, and then  
wrote about it for the NY Times. At no time did I suggest (as the  
Financial Times did) that this is a trend or backlash. I wrote about  
this particularly as one of those interesting unintended consequences  
of multiple kinds of behavior coalescing into one place.

The cafe exists to sell coffee (or that's how it manages to exist),  
and the owners founded it to provoke discussion and create a kind of  
environment they would like to spend time in. The epiphenomenon of  
they're adding Wi-Fi changed the culture of the cafe enormously.

It's not a trend in the sense of thousands of cafes trying limiting  
Wi-Fi, but it is what I would call a mini-trend: a small subset of  
cafes are obviously struggling with the laptop crowd. I didn't have  
room in this article to write about the dozens of systems that let  
cafe owners meter free (or fee) access.

No trend, but definitely interesting to a large audience given the  
response to the various articles that have come up and then  
discussion on Slashdot, local forums in Seattle, and the general cafe  
trade reaction.
--
Glenn Fleishman
seattle . washington
unsolicited pundit . glennf.com
columnist . seattletimes.com/practicalmac
daily wireless networking news . wifinetnews.com


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