6 Oct

Yandex, the savior of Wi-Fi in Moscow

Category: Web-related

About one month ago I was about to give up all hope on Wi-Fi catching on any time soon in Moscow. Of the few public hotspots that this metropolis had to offer, the average hourly cost was around $10 per hour. The cheapest location, Time Online, had just raised their hourly cost from 70r to 120r ($4), making it unaffordable with my lowly teacher’s salary. My Wi-Fi card was sentenced to collect dust on the bookshelf until further notice. . .

Enter Yandex (Russia’s answer to Yahoo) with that aforementioned notice.

The company has just introduced a new service called Yandex Wi-Fi, in which they have teamed up with local restaurants and cafes to offer FREE Wi-Fi to customers.

Judging from the advertisements and restaurants currently participating, it seems that they are targeting the elite PDA-equipped business lunch folks – but that isn’t gonna stop me from trying it out. Especially since two of the locations are within 10 minutes of my apartment.

This is definitely good news for the future of wireless internet in Moscow. Which reminds me, what is the current state (cost, availability, etc.) of Wi-Fi in the US these days? Anybody use it regularly?

Posted Wednesday, October 6th, 2004 at 8:29 pm
Filed Under Category: Web-related
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3

Responses to “Yandex, the savior of Wi-Fi in Moscow”

Nathan Forrest
October 8th, 2004 at 8:16 am

hey tom, glad to hear you are alive and well. Send me an email sometime. anyways to comment on the wi-fi situation in the states. Actually all of Florida State Campus will soon be wireless. Broadband wireless internet in any building and even outside on the green. Its pretty cool. Later man , Nate

Justin
October 10th, 2004 at 12:50 am

Open Wi-Fi hotspots are very common in the U.S. Here in Denver, I can pick up no less than four open wireless access points from my apartment. There are literally thousands in the downtown area. They’re very numerous in Tallahassee, as well, and all coffeeshops, libraries, and many other public places offer free wi-fi to their customers. The most common wireless APs come with authentication/encryption disabled by default, and most people don’t bother enabling it, meaning that no matter where you are, you’re most likely going to find free internet access somewhere.

Jim Barcelona
October 18th, 2004 at 4:50 am

Hey, the status of WiFi in San Francisco, CA is pretty awesome. There are lots of free wifi spots in San Francisco. Here’s a link detailing WiFi in San Francisco:

http://www.cheesebikini.com/archives/000256.html#000056

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