Business Owners Can You Depend On Wi fi When You Travel

D on’t worry – wi-fi is            through a phone line. And for      everywhere these days!"         further backup, I had a virtual                                    assistant whom I could call to     That opinion is widespread, but       request her to check email for me  as I prepared for a 10-week           if I were stuck someplace where    sabbatical road trip from             neither wi-fi nor dialup worked.   Massachusetts to Alaska and back,                                        I didn’t give it much weight. I       My husband and I stayed in         would be traveling to some of the     mid-priced or budget motels,       most remote areas of North            lodges and bed and breakfast       America and needing to check my       inns. We also took a few           email each morning and night to       overnight ferries. While we took   keep my business affairs humming      day hikes, we never camped out in  along smoothly.                       the wilderness. Here’s what we                                           experienced:                       Because I found it impossible to                                         get reliable information on           Wi-fi in motel or B&B room,        Internet access along our route,      worked fine: 34%                   I prepared for worst-case             Wi-fi in office or restaurant,     scenarios. And I’m reporting my       not in room: 12%                   findings here to help others plan     Wi-fi in room worked               for a similar trip.                   intermittently: 14%                                                      Wi-fi took more than 20 minutes    Before we left home, I equipped       to get working: 8%                 myself with a wi-fi card in my        Wi-fi did not work after           laptop and purchased a handheld       considerable fiddling, used modem  phone/computer device that could      instead: 6%                        access wireless Internet too. The     Wi-fi down town-wide from storm    laptop also had a modem that          or outage: 4%                      could be used for Internet access     Wired high-speed Internet in       room: 4%                              In Watson Lake, Yukon, however, a  Wi-fi available but forgot to ask     town of about 1500 people, the     for password: 2%                      high-speed Internet network was    No wi-fi available, used modem        DSL and did not work because       instead: 12%                          phone service throughout the town  No Internet connection at all         was down. This meant that my       available: 4%                         backup plan – calling my virtual                                         assistant – wouldn’t work,         So, only one-third of the time        either. There was nothing I could  did wi-fi work conveniently and       do about it until we drove on to   right away in the room where we       another waystation on the Alaska   were staying. Another third of        Highway where my hand-held device  the time we were able to use          picked up wi-fi at a truck stop.   wi-fi with some delay or                                                 inconvenience. And the other          In Alaska, we stayed one night at  third of the time, we would have      a rustic lodge in the middle of    been without Internet access had      nowhere that said they had wi-fi   wi-fi been our only option.           in the restaurant, but it didn’t                                         work, and our room did not have a  In those no wi-fi situations,         phone line to which we could plug  hooking up the laptop to the          in the modem. The lodge did not    phone line was our next option.       have a pay phone, either, for a    Most of the time, this happened       call to my assistant, so again we  in isolated places where finding      hunted down a wi-fi connection in  a coffeehouse with wi-fi for          the next couple of towns the       patrons was totally out of the        following day.                     question. And in nearly all of                                           those cases, the laptop modem         We were in luck – these nights     came to the rescue.                   and the nights we slept on                                               ferries that didn’t have Internet  access – didn’t generate any of       blankly when I asked if they had   those angry "Why the #%@$* didn’t     wi-fi. But they all understood     you answer my email?" messages        the question, "Do you have         that any business owner dreads.       wireless Internet?" Use the                                              longer question, especially        One bonus bit of advice: In many      outside of metropolitan areas.     places, motel clerks stared at me      About the Author: Marcia Yudkin, author of Web Site Marketing Makeover and 10 other books, publishes a weekly newsletter on creative marketing, Marketing Minute (http://www.yudkin.com/marksynd.htm ). Find out more about her report "Take Your Business On The Road," at http://www.yudkin.com/ontheroad.htm . Published At: www.Isnare.com