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FREE WIFI HAS come to be something we almost expect from the coffee shops, pubs and hotels we use.
Statistics from the telecoms regulator, ComReg, show the number of public WiFi hotspots in Ireland are on the increase.
In its latest quarterly figures, it recorded 2,860 hotspots and 4,899 access points
That’s a jump of 18% when compared to the first quarter of 2013.
ComReg says that the use of WiFi minutes also rose by 68.4% in the first three months of the year.
Plenty of big coffee chains such as Starbucks have led the way in the world of free WiFi. But does it attract spending or will it lead to customers saying and using WiFi for hours on end over one cup of coffee?
Some cafés in America have started to deliberately turn off the WiFi, believing it to be improving business and adding a ‘community aspect’ to their businesses.
Stateside
August First Bakery is a café in Burlington, Vermont.
The coffee shop initially offered free WiFi when it opened four year ago – however, it has now banned laptops with a sign saying ‘Screen Free’. It states:
No laptops, iPods or similar devices. Reading, daydreaming, and chit chat encouraged.
The owner, Jodi Whalen, described how some people were coming in for their coffee in the morning and sitting in the café using the WiFi all day.
“We saw a lot of customers come in and look for a table, not be able to find one and leave so it was a lot of money flowing out the door for us.”
She told the blog, all tech considered, that sales have increased since the ban.
To walk into a place and see people looking at their screens with a blank stare…it takes away the community aspect of it – of you being in a place with other people.
Bryant Simon is a Temple University history professor and author of Everything but the Coffee: Learning About America From Starbucks.
He says, “There is now a market niche for not having Wi-Fi.”
So how does Ireland fare out in comparison to the US on WiFi or lack thereof? With our WiFi figures on the increase, do we really have a niche for switching it off?
Ireland’s Internet
The owner of Clement & Pekoe coffee shop in Dublin, Simon Cummings, told TheJournal.ie that they do offer WiFi but don’t have many customers who take advantage.
“We sometimes get American college students asking for WiFi straight away and they may be on it for a long time but generally it’s not a problem.
Our customers use the WiFi but they don’t take advantage. For us it works to give that service – it helps business.
Shane Deasy is the Managing Director of Bitbuzz, Ireland’s largest WiFi network operator.
He said that a fear of customers taking advantage of a free service has always been there.
“Coffee shop owners have always been worried that chairs could be taken for hours on end.
WiFi usage has increased three fold in coffee shops over the last 12 months but log-on time is now much shorter.
“So more people are logging on – but for a shorter time. Generally people just want to check their e-mails compared to taking out a laptop for a few hours.”
Deasy said that Costa Coffee in Ireland has its WiFi linked to customer loyalty cards and if they don’t have one, they only get 30 minutes.
He also described how some of its WiFi services log out the customer after 20 minutes.
“It’s a gentle reminder so people realise they have been using it for a certain amount of time.”
Bitbuzz is also seeing that some coffee shops want more control while some don’t want WiFi in there at all, like this café in Bray.
Deasy commented that they will still have people sitting there surfing the web because people have their own connections on mobiles.
He added that it’s hard for companies who don’t want a free connection as “everyone is coming in expecting WiFi”.
When asked about the problems experienced in the US of customers coming in for hours on end to use the connection, Deasy said:
We don’t see it in Ireland to be honest, we would get complaints from our customers if we did.
So…for now at least, it looks like Ireland’s love affair with free WiFi is safe from getting the plug pulled.
We may love our free internet-but we don’t seem to be setting up office in our local cafes just yet.
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Fine analysis. Putin is already beaten but because he’s staked everything on winning, he has no way out. Not just his political future but his life is on the line if he capitulates…
This article by Tom Clonan is a classic example of Western media propaganda. Tom lays put exactly why he thinks Russia can’t win, where “winning” means making the entire territory of Ukraine a vassal of the Kremlin, as it was during the USSR period. But the propaganda is in what Tom *doesnt* say, which is that it is now clear that Western sanctions will not topple the Putin regime, the West will not make Russia a vassal in the unipolar US-led world order and even the lesser goal of Ukraine recovering all five annexed Oblasts seems almost impossible to achieve at this point, with 300,000 Russian reservists entering the war in the coming weeks. Tom is correct, Russia can’t win this war completely. Tom won’t say that the West cannot win either.
@Rob Dowling:
Of all the comments and considering the blatant bias continuously spewed out by the ‘expert’ Tom Clonan, your comment is the nearest to a rational, objective analysis of all the comments so far. And, before you all start, stating a rational, objective position is the exact opposite of taking sides.
@Rob Dowling: the collective West could beat the russians in a week. the Ukranian army can expel the russians if given the proper heavy weaponry to hit targets in russia
@Rian Lynch: “Could” is just chit chat talk in the comments section of the Journal. I could say the Russians “could” turn every major city in Europe into a red hot molten lake of radioactive sludge using nuclear-tippes hypersonic missiles but of course I don’t, because it’d be auld talk based on “could” hypothetical this and that. The actual *fact* is Putin wont be toppled at this stage. So the West can’t *win* and many people remain in denial about that fact, clearly.
@Rob Dowling: the West isnt fighting thats a fact for you. Putin is grinding Russia into oblivion and is reigniting the cold war.
@Rob Dowling: a win for Ukraine just requires them to push the Russians back to the border, and whether they are able to do that depends on who runs out of munitions first. Also, those 300K Russian reservists are likely to be low quality trops with little training or combat experience and most of them support staff rather than front line soldiers. Many of them will have been pulled from other parts of the border, leaving the motherland dangerously exposed.
@Rob Dowling: All you can know is that Western sanctions have not toppled Putin’s regime YET. Any number of factors could bring about regime change in Russia.
@Rob Dowling: 300,000 untrained and underequipped people fighting against an army with better weapons, better training, more experienced and more motivation to fight.
Soes not sound like a fair fight to me.
@Declan McKenna: Tom Clonan is an expert a well known and respected one.
@Gary Kearney:
Time will reveal the accuracy of your statement and of his ‘expert’ opinions.
Excellent article. Unfortunately the only way this war will end is when putin no longer exists. Putin will eventually end up hiding out in a bunker waiting for the end.victory to the Ukraine and its warrior people.
@Paddy Ryan: depends on who replaces him.
@Paddy Ryan: Unfortunately they are hawks in the Kremlin that are far more extreme than Putin. I don’t see a happy ending for the Ukraine or the world to this conflict.
Three things have been truly astounding to me: 1) the obscene level of corruption in Russia from the top all the way to the bottom: materiel not being fit for purpose because maintenance funds were being funnelled into various pockets along the way; recruits sent into the meat grinder with barely any training and having to kit themselves out because their officers stole their original kit. 2) the sheer bloodthirstiness of the mainstream Russian media, calling on the army to hit Ukraine even harder, kill any Ukrainian who isn’t pro-Russian, level more of their their cities, up to and including nuclear strikes on Ukraine – and even the UK. 3) A sizeable chunk of the Russian population is ok with this ‘SMO’ against their so-called brothers.
Russia couldn’t beat Ireland if all males were called up and armed with billions worth of weapons from NATO. It’s interesting that Russia have said they are increasing their army by 40%, to 1.5 million. No side will be ‘winning’ anytime soon.
I read a Guardian analyst claim that Crimea is Zelensky’s greatest bargaining chip, the implication being that in the end it would be ceded to Russia as part of a peace deal, and that Zelensky knows this but cannot say anything other than that there will be no compromise.
I wonder like everyone else how and when this will end. I’ve noticed that even the suggestion of compromise is highly controversial. I’ve also noticed how the Kremlin has changed the narrative from fighting Ukrainian nazis to satanists and finally to NATO, with the latter enemy apparently quite succesful in garnering national support for the war. The idea is that Ukraine is forced to fight on behalf of NATO and US world domination, and seemingly this idea is popular among Russians who feel the collapse of the USSR was a humiliation that is worth resisting against.
Given all that, I wonder what the real options are. In the face of continuing Russian defeats popular support may actually increase, enticing Putin to keep escalating, by drafting more and more people into the army and eventually using nuclear weapons (the ultimate scorched earth).
There seems to be a reliance in the west that the Kremlin regime may fall, but whether that solves anything depends on what replaces it. So without compromise (the Crimea theory) there is either continuing escalation (with this or a similar/worse new Kremlin regime), or the war ends (under a new pragmatic Kremlin regime). That means two out of three options imply a length and bad, and possibly very bad war.
I hope as Tom says next year will bring common sense and humanity, but realistically I think we’re in this for the long haul. Very long.
@Mick Tobin: sorry mick but your analysis is flawed because Russia simply doesn’t have the economic strength for a long war plus the hardcore western sanctions are destroying its economy as well
Ukraine has already lost. for Russia winning is preventing Russian in Donbas from being attacked and preventing Ukraine from becoming a NATO member and EU state have proven they are not sovereign.
Germany industry is in melt down the US blew up Germany pipeline and Germans said nothing while it gas dependent industries close.
Russia used a tiny army in Ukraine that is about to change
@Joeohah: utter claptrap ,Russian bot
Unfortunately Ukraine cannot win this war either. What exactly is NATO’s end game? The longer this war goes on, the greater the risk of a full scale nuclear conflict.
Only the naive believe that the US narrative that this war is Putin war this war was 30 years in the making no matter the leadership in Russia this war was provoked that is evident from the US matra Putin’s unprovoked war.
Russian in Ukraine were left stateless by the West hero the naive Gorbachev and Reagan.
Think Putin will be toppled from within, soon enough too, t.g.
@Caoimhghin Whyte: Be careful what you wish for. There are hawks in the Kremlin far more extreme than Putin that will more than likely resort to even more extreme measures.
RETIRED COLONEL DOUGLAS MACGREGOR AS A DIFFERENT POINT OF VIEWhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NohouAK1deg
If I had been Putin, I would have mounted an attack solely on the Donetsk front. It would have been much easier to justify in terms of aiding the Russian-speaking minority in the area, and Western opinion would have been more divided. As it is, Putin has done incalculable damage to Russia’s own interests and, most worryingly, to the movement for peace and neutrality in Europe.
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