Surprise of the day: In praise of McDonalds
I'm working from home today - not so much to be green but I had a routine appointment with my Doctor late in the morning and it just made more sense. Because it's half term I'm also minding my daughter so she ended up coming with me to the Doctor's and on the way home we popped into McDonalds to grab lunch. We're only occasional visitors there (I'm not anti McDonalds - actually I think they get an unfairly bad press - but I'm no fan of theirs either). So it came as news to me so see leaflets proclaiming FREE wireless. I know they've had Wi-Fi for a while but it had always been an access point for BT's chargeable service. Now, working with TheCloud they've gone free.
I noticed that the Oxford branch of Pie Minister (good name, shame the company web site seems to be a broken flash app) was advertising free WiFI, which is great but (with every respect to them) insignificant, but most towns have McDonalds, and a huge number of people visit McDonalds, even if like me it's only once every few weeks. If McDonalds give me FREE WI-FI when I'm only spending £1 on a Coffee, it becomes harder for a hotel to charge me £10 for it when I'm paying them £200 to sleep there. Come to that I'll expect it for free when I'm spending £3 on a Coffee in Starbucks - who pioneered setting Coffee with the web.
When Broadband costs the same as a daily newspaper is it unrealistic to expect broadband access provided in the same places which put out the days papers ?
(And a note to hotels. Free internet in the lobby, with free papers, chargable in the room - like the delivered morning paper might work).