New law requires all restaurants in Malaysian city to provide Wi-Fi | Hacker News Reader

New law requires all restaurants in Malaysian city to provide Wi-Fi

thenextweb.com

41 pointstilt17 comments

As someone who works on their computer all the time, I find it remarkable that so many coffee shops in NYC still don’t provide free Wi-Fi.

Probably because they don't want you there using your laptop! I avoid coffee shops that are overcrowded with laptop users because I can't find a place to sit and drink my coffee.

Starbucks has taken a different approach in NYC: keep the Wi-Fi, rip out the power outlets. This lets you use your laptop but effectively imposes a time limit.

I noticed this in Starbucks in Toronto in the past week. I haven't been there in years and wondered how they rid themselves of the laptop wielders, and noticed that there's no power outlets left. The couple that are, are the floor-mounted key-locked like those in big shopping malls for the maintenance and when they set up kiosks at christmas time.

I think this is generally a good idea, but in the iPad/Kindle era, not sure how much of a problem battery life is going to be.

Its a lot less common to see someone set up shop for a full-blown workstation with their iPad. Sure, you can sit down and work for hours on an iPad (especially if you bring a separate keyboard) but I doubt many people would do this without some other circumstance that prevents them from bringing a laptop. I doubt that's going to change for a while.

So a group of people who are devoted to food service now have to become experts at wi-fi deployment or hire someone who is. Sounds like a really crappy tax and a distraction.

Several things: from a 10k foot view, this sounds like a great intention (mass-wifi-coverage) with an onerous requirement (only for ~1200sqft establishments though) to mandate installation and maintenance of wifi.

On the other hand, it creates a government required cottage industry of setting up wifi (insurance, smog checks, etc).

On the gripping hand, those wifi-fearing freaks will definitely need to stay away from Malaysia.

Big Nick's Pizza in NYC has a sign that says something like "NO LAPTOPS. THIS IS NOT A LIBRARY." To be clear, they can pull off such a sign with their persona.

Always cracks me up.

And soon the internet companies will be charging "business" rates to supply restaurants with internet.

Another law that will have unintended consequences.

I'm worried about the level of interference this will cause in the already-crappy 2.4 GHz band. I'm sure most restaurants will just plug in a wifi gateway and leave it with default settings, probably with the broadcast power all the way up and set to channel 1 or 6.

A more elegant solution is using the vending machines as in Japan : http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/28/japanese-vending-machine-...

Sounds like a good idea; actually makes things harder for little bussinesses.

It probably even hurts existing restaurant owners, since, if providing free WiFi was good business to them, they would be doing it already, without waiting for some law to be mandated.

EDIT: since you changed wording in your comment from "startups" to businesses, I guess my reply to you here is now redundant.

Are you implying that all restaurant owners seize every possible good business opportunity?

The idea is that ones who seize good opportunities will stay in business, and those that don't (offer Wi-Fi in this example) will eventually go out of business without the need for laws.

On a second thought, I guess there is a certain potential benefit (to the consumer / economy in general) of being able to walk into any restaurant and use WiFi. Still, I am happier to see changes like that come about naturally rather than being forced from above.