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Thursday, May 27, 2004
Ng: Cheap Internet for travelers
By Wilson Ng
Wired Desktop
NOT FAST. I was in Manila last week, and since it was a much longer trip than usual, it was important for me to get a hotel with a really good, fast, inexpensive Internet connection. Is that too much to ask?
I had been to over a dozen hotels in Manila. Unfortunately, many of them were really not that great when it came to the Internet. So I ended up in a hotel that charged, would you believe, P17 per minute, or P700 per day.
They said this was a DSL connection and fast. I logged in, and after 12 minutes, I was still waiting for my first mail to come out. I decided not to continue. I figured no message was worth 10 minutes to download, and P170 to read.
Hotels should consider this. I have been to many hotels worldwide that have fast Internet for free, and believe me, it is something you will want to keep going back to. I was even once in a hotel that provided one computer with free Internet in the room.
I don’t know how many travelers still find value in hotel rooms with refrigerators, but definitely Inter-net is a big plus. And in this day and age, it should not cost an arm and a leg.
So I went to an Internet café just two blocks away. It was not really that cheap, at P60 per hour, but the attendants were professional, the air-conditioning was cool, and the machines and the connection were fast. There was something else I noticed—almost half of the people there were Koreans.
In fact, a couple of times there I was given a Korean computer with a Korean Internet browser. This café near the hotel belt probably found it quite lucrative to be a place where Koreans could meet each other, play online games, and check the Internet.
Once you get known in town as a place where they meet, then you can have your own niche in the market and also charge somewhat higher rates.
Maybe some cafes should consider this. I think there is a lucrative market to cater to visitors with special needs, especially if you are near a tourist spot.
Many of us cannot bear to be without Internet in a day, and I think many travelers would consider first to be where there is really inexpensive Internet connection.
COMMANDMENTS. Here are 10 commandments of being safe that I found on a website. You might want to cut and paste them near your computer:
l Protect computers with firewalls.
l Use antivirus software.
l Do not open email from unknown sources.
l Use hard-to-guess passwords and keep them private.
l Be a responsible cyber citizen.
l Do not share access to your computer with strangers;
l Disconnect from the Internet when not using it;
l Back up your computer regularly.
l Habitually download security protection update patches.
l Evaluate computer security at least twice a year.
(e-mail: wilson@esprint.com.)
(May 27, 2004 issue)
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