An aside: Spanish WiFi

Pictured: Spain's Technology Minister

Before I continue with the excursion, I’d like to comment briefly on one of my grievances with my second country. Free WiFi is almost remarkably difficult to find in Spain. Luckily, I have it at my host house, but if I want to go somewhere to do homework (I find it easier to concentrate in cafes) that requires internet, I’m in for an adventure. That’s because almost no place has WiFi. There are two main coffee chains here that are guaranteed to have it, however: Starbucks and a local chain called Café de Indias. But the internet at these places comes with a major catch; the code they give you when you make a purchase is only good for forty five minutes of internet. This is where I have a problem, on three main grounds:

First, this is a country, nay, a continent that is famous for not hurrying you once you sit down at a table in a restaurant. In the US, the waiters largely rely on tips for their living. Thus, lingering at restaurants after a meal without continuing to buy stuff is really looked down upon. Indeed, it’s not uncommon for a waiter to request that people leave if they’re taking up too much time at a table on a busy night. In Europe, however, I can go into a restaurant on the busiest night of the week, get a table, order nothing but a café con leche and sit there as long as I damn well please, without the waiter so much as giving me a second glance. Because here, once you sit down at a table, it’s yours for as long as you want it. The waiters here make decent salaries, and tips are not expected, so it makes no difference whatsoever to them how many tables they serve per night. The reason I bring this up is because I can already hear the responses I’ll get: “But Joe, if they didn’t limit the time, people would just sit there all day!” What difference does it make to them? Is my taking up a table to use internet (after making a purchase, of course) any different from a financial standpoint than taking up a table to read the paper/people watch/chat with friends/do nothing at all? Of course it isn’t.

 Second, it’s not like they’re paying for internet by the minute. These aren’t long-distance phone calls we’re talking about here. Nor do they have a finite amount of internet. They don’t have an “internet cistern” in the back to collect internet when it rains kilobits. The internet isn’t going to run out. Nor does it cost more for more people to use. It’s greed, pure and simple.

Third, WiFi is not a new technology. It’s been around for years, which in technology time makes it an old, old innovation. For those of you rolling your eyes and reminiscing about a simpler time before there was internet and making a sarcastic comment about how unfortunate it is that I have to go without WiFi, consider first that I rely on the internet to research and turn in many of my assignments for class, as well as to keep in touch with family and friends back home. So there is a legitimate reason why I need it. Further, I think it’s a legitimate complaint to not have WiFi available at all times, wherever I am, for however long I need it, because this it’s the year 2011, people! Those who think I need to be less dependent on modern luxuries, would you think differently if I was complaining that all the restaurants and cafes here were un-air conditioned? Or required you to bring your own coffee cup, because they still hadn’t gotten around to adopting absurdly sophisticated technology of disposable cups? At some point, it’s reasonable to expect a certain level of available technology. I’m not asking for 4G connectability in the middle of the ocean. I’m asking (reasonably, I think) for a readily-providable customer accommodation in a developed, western country.

It seems fitting that at the end of this rant, I’ve discovered that my log-in information that they gave me at the register no longer works. I didn’t use forty-five minutes of internet. I used it as sparingly as one might use the last remnants of their heating oil in the dead of winter (which, as mentioned above, seems to be the Spaniards’ attitude toward internet anyway), getting on for five minutes then logging off for long stretches. I know I didn’t misunderstand the forty-five minute limit to mean that I could use as much internet as I wanted for forty-five minutes from the moment they generated that particular log in, either, because I was still able to get on an hour after they gave me the code. No, what seems to happen is that they put an arbitrary expiration time on the code (two hours, maybe) because internet kept in reserves goes rancid? Because they have to maintain the validity of the log-in information by burning large amounts of fossil fuel? Because their system can only keep up with three randomly-generated, time-sensitive codes at a time? To spite capitalists? Hell if I know their reasoning.