Keeping Connected to Your Web Hosting Business - Finding Hotspots, and What You Can Do With Them
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Tracking down hotspots is even easier than you might think. A directory of wireless Internet access network nodes is available at http://www.wi-
fihotspotlist.com/. Enter your address information; you can choose to look for a hotspot that is within one, two, five or 10 miles of that location. Using this search, I found two hotspots within two miles of my home – not surprisingly, both are located within Starbucks coffee shops, and both are hosted by T-Mobile Wireless Broadband. Incidentally, T-Mobile also offers a subscription service for its wireless broadband Internet access, with more than 18,000 hotspots worldwide.
JiWire also offers a search for hotspots on its home page, http://www.jiwire.com. CNet mirrors the site on its Hotspot Zone located at http://cnet.jiwire.com/. Their search function offers more fine-grained control over your search than the one mentioned in the previous paragraph. It allows you to search for hotspots located within 0.2, 0.5, 1, 5, 10, 20, 50, and 100 miles of any particular address. Additionally, you can search by type of location, provider, and whether the hotspot is paid or free (it defaults to bringing you results for both).
Being able to connect to the Internet makes it easier to connect to people. Imagine being in a Starbucks and getting a phone call from a client. While you’re sipping your latte, you whip open your laptop, connect to the Internet, and fire off an IM to one of your company’s network engineers to get some questions answered. Never mind that the engineer is across the country taking a certification class.
One sales marketing director for a web hosting company spoke with delight about the kinds of things this makes possible: “I can reply to email from technical support because a data center deployment is not going smoothly. I can be at an appointment with a prospect, receive email about the customer problem and make a quick phone call to solve it. When I get back to the office, I’m already caught up and don’t have to take care of the crisis. It’s already been handled.”
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