Stroll into a Starbucks cafe with your laptop and click on your internet browser. Up pops a screen brazenly demanding the princely sum of £5 for a mere hour’s net access on its hotspot, operated by T-Mobile, as you sup on the company’s already pricey froth, or £13 for a day pass. As if.

Having finished your coffee, you head off to the station, only to discover that your train has been cancelled because of the wrong type of sun. Never mind, the station has a WiFi hotspot, so you can while away the delay with the credit you have left from the coffee shop. Except that you can’t, because this particular hotspot is run by BT Openzone, and it wants £6 from your credit card — and wants you to fill in another lengthy form — before you can even think about e-mailing the office to let them know you’re running late. You storm off in disgust, opting for the nearest Hilton hotel, only to find that it, too, is in the thrall of BT Openzone.

Despite the long-held expectation of universal WiFi access and the fact that most laptops and palmtops now routinely offer built-in reception, you have to hunt high and low to find a WiFi connection that doesn’t charge. Intel’s handy hotspot finder (intel.jiwire.com) says that only three of Manchester’s 274 WiFi access points are free. In Edinburgh, only eight out of 191 listed are free, while not one of Liverpool’s 138 or Birmingham’s 207 comes gratis. All are a far cry from Bristol, where a chunk of the city centre is now one giant free WiFi hotspot, thanks to the local authority.

What happened to the dream of the digital lily pad, where free WiFi networks would overlap, to create blizzard-fast internet access for all? It remains a dream, with our hopes lying dead in the water.

Those who need laptop internet access while out on the hoof currently rely on 3G datacards, which offer not only pricey tariffs, but frequently flaky reception as soon as you stray outside of metropolitan areas. The much-heralded update to 3G, known as High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA), promises download speeds up to five times faster than 3G services — between 1Mbps and 2Mbps. However, this technology is not expected to hit the UK until the autumn.

Is it really so fanciful to expect coffee shops and bars to provide internet access on the house? No, not when you consider how cheap it is for them to do so. Most businesses will have a high-speed broadband connection installed on the premises in the first place. The price of allowing customers to tap into that existing connection is simply to install a wireless router to beam the signal around the building — a one-off cost of a couple of hundred pounds, should they set it up themselves.

Indeed, only last week, I walked down my local high street in Brighton and found a coffee shop providing free WiFi access. So how can a small cafe undercut the multinational chains?

Here’s how my local coffee shop did it: a company called Loose Connection (www.looseconnection.com) installed a broadband line and inexpensive wireless router in the cafe, for which the cafe owner pays less than £100 per month. Cheerful customers can then walk in and fire up their laptops straightaway, without fuss. No logins, no credit cards, no hassle. They are likely to spend more on food and drink while they surf, and help fill the shop at off-peak periods. Loose Connection has installed hotspots in 19 pubs and cafes in Brighton. “We haven’t been asked to remove one yet,” says its director, Roger Horlock.

Now, here’s how the money-grabbing multinationals do it. They, too, install a new broadband line and router in each cafe or hotel, completely ignoring the perfectly good broadband connection that, for example, the Hilton already has. The cost is thus ratcheted up. Then, because they want to charge you, they build a costly payment system and add security software to ensure customers’ laptops are not hacked into, all of which comes at a price which they pass on to you. It’s ludicrously expensive, mainly because they designed it to be.

So why did Starbucks and Hilton allow themselves to be seduced by T-Mobile or BT in this way? Despite repeated requests, neither company gave a satisfactory answer, in my view. The logical assumption is that they’re simply more inclined to milk customers for a quick buck than to provide an amenity with — as the suits like to say — added value. When asked to justify itself, Starbucks explained their policy as part of “a global roll-out”, while Hilton claimed that the decision to go with BT Openzone has created “the best service on the market”. It has the best profit margins, I’ll grant.

For their part, BT and T-Mobile each insists that its services are fairly priced for business customers. Nonsense, says the respected international analyst Gartner, which found that only a quarter of UK/US businessmen use public hot-spots, because the cost is prohibitive. If executives with generous expense accounts can’t afford their rates, who exactly is their target market? Roman Abramovich?

What does the telecoms regulator, Ofcom, have to say about this rip-off? “It is a nascent market, and wherever possible we try and stay out,” an Ofcom spokesman replied. Given that its predecessor, Oftel, made a pig’s ear of broadband regulation, that’s hardly surprising.

What will it take for Ofcom to pull its finger out? “If there was enough evidence that consumers were unhappy, we would look at it,” said the spokesman. He claimed that it hadn’t had any complaints so far. It has now: mine. If you, too, want to stop this wireless robbery, I suggest you do likewise at www.ofcom.org.uk.

So what’s the answer for those of us who either need to stay connected — especially now that so many companies routinely work collaboratively on digital documents — or simply want to take advantage of fast wireless web access to try innovative new services, such as free internet phone calls?

In the longer term, a new version of WiFi, known as WiMax, could well be the answer, as it offers a range of miles, rather than yards. However, its creator, Intel, is being distinctly cagey about a specific launch date. Scott Richardson, general manager of Intel’s broadband wireless division, told VNUnet last week that Europe is likely to be one of the last regions to roll out WiMax, or wireless broadband, with services not expected until 2008. “But that’s not fixed,” he added. Which leaves us at the mercy of the WiFi hotspot rip-off merchants.

Central heating was once a luxury item, and in hotter climes, air conditioning used to attract a premium, in hotels and such, before competition made each a widely accepted necessity. A technology that is the lifeblood of an information-rich economy has become the victim of sheer greed. That is a scandal.

So if you are an independent cafe, bar or hotel owner, why not take on the big boys by installing a free WiFi hotspot? (Seek advice on security from an IT consultant.) After all, it’s not often you can beat the multinationals on price.

HOTSPOT COSTS

These figures show the scandalous pricing of two UK WiFi providers:

BT Openzone (www.btopenzone.com)
8,400 hotspot locations
Pay as you go: 24p per minute
1 hour: £6
24 hours: £10
1 month: tariffs £23.50-£29

T-Mobile (www.t-mobile.co.uk/hotspot)
2,000 hotspot locations
1 hour: £5
24 hours: £13
1 month: £45

Finding free WiFi hotspots
www.zdnet.co.uk/specials/wifimap
intel.jiwire.com

To locate your nearest hotspot, try Boingo’s free sniffer software www.boingo.com/download.html

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