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Monday, June 25, 2007

WiFi in the Baltics - showing how it's done properly

A few days ago Martin Geddes wrote this piece about his experience of WiFi in Lithuania's capital Vilnius.

By coincidence, I'm currently sitting in a cafe in its neighbouring capital of Riga in Latvia. I ordered a very good cup of coffee for about £1.70, along with a one-hour WiFi prepaid card from Lattelecom for £1. The waitress, who knew exactly what WiFi was, brought the card to my table and added it to my bill. Username & password are a user-friendly 6 characters long, the login process equally simple.

My hotel last night also had a Lattelecom hotspot covering both public areas & rooms. Again, a very simple, memorable, hotel-wide login, with the cost covered by my room price.

I'll guess that in both cases, the cafe & hotel use Lattelecom's broadband services, and get provided with WiFi by default.

This is how public WiFi should be done. Take note, price-gougers at Swisscom Eurospot & peers.
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6 comments:

  1. vinnie mirchandani12:25 pm

    Dean, I have made a crusade of bitching about gouging around hotspot and mobile roaming whenever I travel around world. Two recent trips to E. Europe and India below.

    http://dealarchitect.typepad.com/deal_architect/2007/06/the_new_banks.html

    http://dealarchitect.typepad.com/deal_architect/2007/06/the-men-win-big.html

    If all consumers, especially those mobile corss country complain may be telcos and hotels will pay attention?

    ReplyDelete
  2. romanovskis4:27 pm

    Dean, I am your regular reader in Latvia. I would enjoy meeting you to chat about wireless future. If you have time, give me a notice

    pavels . romanovskis (at) gmail

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous6:55 pm

    Over in Tartu (Estonia's second city, at the other end of the Baltics) we have free wifi coverage over almost the whole city, and coffee's cheaper too :) Tallinn also has plenty of free wifi.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous9:10 pm

    Its good to see that someone has got it right. I say we put our hands together for their sucess and may it move in the direction of the UK.

    Lucas

    Wifi and Mobile phone deals

    ReplyDelete
  5. Unknown10:17 am

    Not unusual to find buses, ships and trains fitted with wifi access points in estonia.

    some random egs
    http://www.muniwireless.com/article/view/5735/
    http://wifi.ee/?p=news&lang=eng&id=321

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous5:51 pm

    yeah i agree. the uk needs for direction on this issue mobile phone deals

    ReplyDelete