I feel out of touch, out of … well.. the basics in life. Have been without internet and e-mail access for some days now, funny how “easy” it was to connect in San Francisco compared to Irvine, Los Angeles. I guess everybody and their dog has internet access around here, but I have yet to find a Wireless internet connection hotspot that I can connect to. Which leaves the whole Wi-Fi “revolution” rather moot there in the US.
Some might remember that I wasn’t able to connect to the Wi-Fi network at Gardermoen Airport in Oslo – I am starting to think that all the raving is just a bunch of raving about nothing, to be totally honest. And that the only way to actually get internet access via Wi-Fi when you are traveling, is to aquire access to networks you aren’t really supposed to be on….
Here in LA I haven’t even been able to be allowed to connect my laptop, so I can’t easily access all my e-mail from my laptop and have that convinience, it really sucks. The center I am at now – Kinko’s is actually a nice business center, but not really the coolest setting for accessing the net. Damn, somebody needs to get the revolution happening here in the US for sure, and in Norway too I think. Might be something to get into, setting up hotspots in Oslo and competing with the big telcos. Telenor, one of the major telcos in Norway has actually decided to charge the same for Wi-Fi connections as they do for GPRS, which means you will have to pay 100 NKR for the first MB of download (thats about 12 US dollar for the first MB) and then 25 NKR (about 3 US dollar) pr. MB after that. If you ask me, thats a total rip-off. Shouldn’t be hard to compete with that. What we need in Norway is a system simular to Joltage where they apply a revenue sharing model to those who set up connection points, that way its a lot easier to build a network – not needing the big bucks to build up the infrastructure. Probably something to look into how to do when I get back to Norway.