Wi-Fi ubiquity

In the UK, we get a lot of our technology trends and direction from the US, so it was interesting to see how much free Wi-Fi has permeated there.

In an effort to manage the telecoms costs, I had data roaming switched off most of the time on my iPhone, but the great thing was that many of the places we went to had free Wi-Fi enabled so it was easy to use the internet.

All the hotels we stayed at provided a password to access their network, but what was more surprising was that stores like Borders bookshop had a professional and very responsive free network without any password/WEP protection. At the Amtrak rail station, it was exactly the same - Wi-Fi available to anyone in the vicinity. We also found the same facility in bars, restaurants, museums etc.

You almost felt like you had a glimpse of the future - everywhere you went people were online on their mobiles or laptops.