By Peter Cochrane, 19 October 2005 13:15
COMMENT Written whilst flying from Crete to London and dispatched via Wi-Fi at Clacket Lane Services on the M25.
For the last seven days I have been working from and travelling around a small corner of Crete. Before I left the UK I had wrongly assumed that high-speed access to the net was likely to be a problem. How wrong can you be!
Not only was my apartment wired with a high-speed LAN, there has been ample evidence of connection possibilities in the form of hotels, cafés and bars offering service at the top of their menu. What is more, the prices have been reasonable - free, free with your coffee/snack/meal, and $1.50 on if you want to play games on an installed console.
You cannot help but be impressed by the hospitality of the Greeks, and their industry in the creation of food of all kinds, not to mention the dramatic landscapes and weather across Crete itself. But as a technologist it seemed to me that every village and small community had connectivity to offer, IT was in common use and every business was online. As one resident manager put it: "The internet is a fact of life, all businesses have to be online, how could you not be?"
The small library of pictures below, taken by yours truly, gives some testament to this view and the pervasiveness of the internet across those parts of Crete I travelled.
Apart from the relief of being able to work trouble-free this past week, I also realised that I had reached another epoch in my roving online life. I can't remember when and where I last connected to the net using my mobile or a fixed-line phone. Wi-Fi and LAN connectivity have suddenly become so pervasive that it looks as though I can abandon another couple of connection leads to lighten my load.
This is an amazing rate of rollout in that 12 - and certainly 18 - months ago the need to dial-in to an ISP was a relatively common necessity for my business on the move. Suddenly, it seems in the distant past.
Top of the menu
All part of the deal - like water, gas and electricity
Dedicated to the cause
Comments
There are 12 comments. Join the discussion
1. Stuart Charman
Having spent the past 2 months arguing with BT to be told that I'm too far from the exchange, I wish I could say the same of all locations in the UK, Peter.
2. Richard
Olympic Effect?
Were the Athens Olympics partly responsible for this investment and improvement in telecoms infrastructure?
Some years ago, our small Devon village was awarded help from EU funds to provide free public Internet terminals, public web-space and training. However, the parish councillors could not agree where to install the free public PCs and ISDN lines (this was before ADSL).
The PCs stayed in their boxes and the project died.
3. Ian Imeson
I find it wonderful that Peter was able to have such great access to the Internet in a remote and rural part of Crete. Can he please explain why I cannot get this in a rural but not ver remote part of Britain, between Derby and Manchester. I still have to rely on dial-up never mind broadband or wireless.
4. Lindsey Annison
OECD report shows us at 13th in the league table for broadband. But does that include all those in 'notspots' such as the two people who have posted responses to this so far? One can only suspect it doesn't and our position may actually be far worse.
Wearing my ABC and CBN hats I am still inundated with reports of problems getting broadband even in late 2005 when supposedly 99%+ can get ADSL, and advising everyone to set up their own community network is one of the solutions. So is campaigning to get the fibre lit, and encouraging fiwi (fibre + wireless in the first mile) which we will be covering at the broadbandendgame.com conference.
But _why_ haven't we 'got it' as these Creteans have? Broadband and the internet are essential to our daily lives and should be ubiquitous. The govt should be taking the lead but they don't use it or need it as those of us 'out in the sticks' do. Maybe that's the problem?
5. Mike Grenville
I spent several hours at Toronto airport recently at the end of a conference. Thinking that wifi was everywhere in North America I thought that I would be able to spend the time catching up on email. Sadly there was not a public wi-fi spot to be found even though I had been using mobile operator Telus wifi at my hotel.
6. Steve
Rubbish. I've done too many installations where clients have promised to have broadband available and when I've arrived there's been no sync. I've even done one where the username and password got shredded by some overenthusiastic staffer.
I lost a client when the ISP insisted on provisioning 2Mbps on a line that would only support 512k!! I only get paid on completion, so where would I be without dial-up and (in one particularly bad case) a GPRS phone?
7. Peter Cochrane
I only report reality as I find it - what you do in your life is yours and yours alone to suffer - be it rubbish or otherwise. Peter
8. Peter Cochrane
Have a giggle on me - check out The Companies House web site - it keeps office hours - 09.00 to 17.00. A web site that keep office hours? Only in the UK - and only a government institution! Peter
9. Peter Cochrane
Easy to explain - there is the political spin and there is the real life experience. The UK is seriously behind the pack and not out front! Peter
10. Peter Cochrane
Human stupidity seems to be entirely fractal and without bounds...what a shame! Peter
11. Peter Cochrane
I'm afraid that an awful lot of people are in that category - and especially a lot of real high wealth earners. DSL was a stupid idea and investment decision on day one and reamins so. The only way we will see real braodband will be with optical fibre...but don't hold you breath. If I were you I would look for a wireless or satellite solution. Peter
12. David Hughes
I agree. Dial up over a fixed network is dead. In the UK I use GPRS or 3G when out and about, and elsewhere wifi. Last week I used wifi in my hotel in Botswana (the Gaborone Sun Hotel), and I use it wherever in the Middle East. The only country I have been recently where wifi wasn't was Sudan, but there were no ATMs either, and even the airline checked passengers against a paper manifest and assigned seats on paper.