Saturday, October 2, 2004

I have been in Lisbon, staying with my parents, for the last few days for a academic promotion jury and a family visit. The first day I was able to borrow a wired connection from one of the local members of the jury for a while after the proceedings. Friday, I tried to find a wireless access point, free or for pay. After much thrashing, I found PT Wi-Fi, supposedly available at a local McDonald's (!). Walked there. Found out that access required buying a prepaid card. The nice manager at the McDonald's said that in 3 months, nobody had tried to use the service, but that he had some cards to sell, two euros for supposedly two hours. Could be worse, bought a card, started downloading my bulky email. After 5 minutes, I lost the connection. Went back to the manager and complained. He apologized that he didn't know much about it, and returned my two euros. Got home, called PT Wi-Fi. It turns out that the two euro cards are not for two hours of use, but just for 20 minutes/5Mb. More expensive than any paid wifi access I've ever seen anywhere else. The alternative would be a 20 euro card for 24 unrestricted hours, only available from a few outlets in the city. Definitely not a way to encourage business. Today, after a nice day in downtown Lisbon (which is looking better than in many years, come and visit) with my parents, we got back home and I sat in the living room to start writing a talk abstract. Surprisingly, I saw a wireless signal. Someone in the building has an open access point. Thanks, whoever you are. No thanks, Portugal Telecom, clueless telecom dinosaur like so many others slowly sinking into the tar pits of irrelevancy. 7:35:36 PM