I’m now into the third week of my trip to California and Mexico. I’m now able to report on a statistically insignificant sample of Internet connectivity in both countries:
- my cousin’s house in Piedmont (Oakland): fast and reliable
- Chaminade hotel and conference center in Santa Cruz: slow and $10 per day
- Crowne Plaza Redondo Beach (service provided by LodgeNet): throughput similar to a 56K modem; $10 per day collected via a painful process requiring a phone call to the front desk every 24 hours
- Courtyard by Marriott Buena Park, CA: fast, reliable, and free
- my other cousin’s house up on Mulholland Drive: slow and flaky
- Quinta Real Hotel, Guadalajara: fast, reliable, and free
- jewelry shop in Tlaquepaque: fast DSL
So far Mexico seems to be coming out ahead. Also, the general rule that hotels that charge for Internet tend to provide terribly slow and flaky service seems to be holding true.
On a related note, I’ve found that an institution’s willingness to provide wireless internet access is inversely proportional to its level of “yuppyness”.
Starbucks insists on gouging you at $6/hr for wireless internet access while the independent (presumably less wealthy) coffee shop down the street can somehow manage to provide it for free.
Meanwhile a $350/night fancy hotel usually insists on charging an additional fee for wireless internet access while a $70/night Comfort Inn will give it to you for free.
I suspect that this phenomenon is more accurately due to an institution’s likelihood of attracting business customers who are loose with their employers’ expense accounts…
Did the guy on Mulholland Drive have a cable modem? I’m just curious if you’re comparing apples to apples here. If his cable modem sucked, I find that surprising. After all, even in many relatively rural, poor parts of America it’s still easy to get a cable modem that works great. (Maybe that’s the point of the post? :))
I’m not sure if Harry has cable modem or DSL up on Mulholland. Maybe DSL.
I can speak for connectivity here in Mexico.
Its all over the board.
Quinta Real is in the the fancier hotel brackets, so for what they are probably charging per night it should be free.
A Jewlery shop in Tlaquepaque?…Strange, but this is probably a “Cafe Internet” which is the typcial mom-pop cafe’s in mexico, which have a DSL connection and then put up two to ten computers and rent out access…very common over here, at around $2 Dlls an hour.
Every provider here is hooked up to Telmex — the national telco monopoly — be it cable or some other small scale telco, the average cost for a Home/Business DSL 512KB line is around $35 Dlls a month, with that you can pretty much figure out the business
And from the previous post, just to get into the value of an MIT education, don’t know many MIT graduates here, but I do know engineers who work at EDS, IBM & HP, who are take out from ‘top’ university programs here.
# Age: 25
# Occupation: Working as SAP,Peoplesoft or some other ERP.
# Income: Over $25,000 per year course
# Boss: Crony of a politician who has the U.S business contact; who barely knows how to write.
# Colleagues: Mostly college.
# Rent: $600 (U.S) per month for great 3BR apartment (shared) or out of parents basement
# Social Life: No much.
# Dream: Become a politician
Daniel: The jewelry shop was not a “cafe Internet”. It was a jewelry shop. There was only one computer, which the proprietress had been using until we entered the store and my companion decided that she needed to spend 20 minutes trying on necklaces. I decided that two women did not need a man to figure out which necklace was best and that it was time to check http://www.avweb.com.
I’m in San Miguel de Allende now at an Internet cafe that also offers sushi and wireless.
I spend my summers on a sailboat in the Pacific Northwest. Most marinas now have wireless access — from the same useless, lousy providers throughout WA and BC. I’ve never had a solid connection for more than a few minutes. When I complain they say it’s the technical challenges of covering a marina with 802.11, yet there are usually networks from nearby homes and businesses coming in loud and clear. Apparently a Linksys is all you need! I don’t know how these shysters can continue to take people’s money.
BTW, the Empress Hotel in Victoria gives great free public wireless, covering everything in front of the hotel, including the city marina.
Free access will be everywhere before long, because customers expect it and the cost of providing it is so low. Charging for 802.11 seems chickenshit already.