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Comment by skrause | Hacker News Reader

It seems that you haven't traveled to Germany yet. Public Wifi is barely available because of legal risks and hotels still try to charge you something like 10 euro for a day of internet access. When I went to Dublin in Ireland the situation was almost as bad.

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On the hotel WiFis, the rule of thumb seems to be that the more expensive the hotel, the costlier and crappier the WiFi will be.

Most cheap family-run hotels and all hostels have free and good WiFi.

This. Hostels world-wide in allegedly 3rd world countries regularly have free wifi - and fast! Yet in the UK, Australia and New Zealand, first-world western countries, free-wifi is rubbish or non-existent on the whole.

Interesting; I indeed haven't traveled to Germany. The internet situation has been pretty good in the eight European countries I've been to recently, though: Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Greece, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, France. In a number of them the government even provides easy-to-find free internet (any library in Paris or Copenhagen, the main public spaces of Helsinki or Heraklion, and so on).

I believe the reasoning is solid: most high-priced consultants and business travelers stay at decent hotels, and the $10/day is an easily expensed item.

Sucks for those of us who also like higher end hotels for personal travel, though.

Actually the trend these days is aircards... Never even get as far as checking out the hotel wifi.

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