Comment: Why Internet access drives me to drink

The idea of giving away free Internet access in the hope that people might buy beer from you, has to be the strangest plan I've heard in some time.

It also appears that it could be the start of something big.

This isn't the first time I've had to write about beer in this column; but it is the first time I've had to drink the stuff in the course of my research.

Bringing the worlds of IT, telecoms and brewing together is a new idea - well, apart from using computers to monitor beer deliveries, of course.

And it's revolutionary.

The idea was created by a new company called Wialess.com. It grew out of a building firm, which was spending money equipping new homes with Cat 5 Ethernet. In future, it's going to fit WiFi wireless systems instead.

And from that, the firm got the idea of selling the Internet to pubs.

Many people who use Internet cafés would be even happier if they could use Internet pubs instead.

They could email their latest digital photographs to the family and friends back home in Japan, or the US, or Bognor Regis while enjoying a glass of Theakston's Old Peculiar and lunch.

Three pints of beer a day pays for the broadband and wireless system. Easy.

Now, if everybody in a town centre started doing this, what hope do you have of selling commercial, paid-for, premium Internet access through wireless hotspots - as BT and Megabeam are hoping to do? For fifty quid a month? When it only works in a few railway stations? And needs passwords? And budgets?

If you can come up with an appropriate answer, please let me know. I really can't think of one.

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