I was sitting in the airport using my $6.95/day Wayport connection to read the news, which included a story about the danger of a WiFi bubble. Which leads one to wonder, where do we really need it?
Airports, obviously; in SeaTac they’ve made a really big deal about it, with garish Centrino-themed Intel posters every hundred yards, and tons of signal everywhere I opened up the laptop.
Coffee shops too, both for road warriors and the self-employed getting out of the box; I remember a conversation with Dave Orchard and a few other home-officers about how much coffee you ought to consume in a morning at a wireless-enabled café to avoid feeling guilty.
So we kicked the question around over the dinner table: is there anywhere else that WiFi is really needed? There may be some office or school environments where it’s just cheaper than running wires; anywhere else?
Medical offices, said Lauren, because you always have to wait there; in fact, pretty well anywhere that you have to wait in the course of a working day would be a good bet.
And finally, around the house; once you’ve gotten used to no trailing wires and sitting wherever you want, it’s hard to go back. But this may fall into the luxury column unless you're pretty hard-core.
But all in all, WiFi really doesn’t feel like that big or game-changing a play to me.
