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Irish wi-fi cafes: the best and the worst

What's the worst cup of coffee in wi-fi enabled cafes around Dublin? As I write, I'm sitting in Cafe Kylemore in Dublin's Stephen's Green Centre with a cappucino from the area's 'Coffee Cuisine' concession. It is bad enough to warrant a move to another place in 10 minutes. (Perhaps it's a cunning ploy to make sure wi-fiers don't hang around for an hour nursing a single cup.) How do other venues compare? Here's what I find:

Insomnia Cafe (BT Openzone service) * * *
Mediocre coffee but excellent hot chocolate. Environment is reasonably comfortable.

Coffee Society (Bitbuzz service) * * * *
Fairly good coffee and top-notch muffins. Very comfortable, too -- currently the best wi-fi cafe chain in Dublin.

Starbucks (Eircom service) *
Best coffee of any cafe chain in Ireland but overall environment is terrible, thanks to cramped seating and loud, cacophonous noise.

KC Peaches (free service, Pearse Street, Dublin 4) * * * * *
The single best wi-fi cafe in Dublin, if not in Ireland. Wi-fi is free (beaucoup kudos), decent quality and the coffee is excellent. Not only that, but sandwiches and pastries are superb. Viva KC Peaches!

Norwich introduces free city wi-fi

It's 256k to the public, so as "not to compete" with commercial operators. Here's the story.

Lord Mayor of Dublin backs free city-wide wi-fi

The new Lord Mayor of Dublin, Vincent Jackson, has come out in favour of free, or very cheap, wi-fi built by the city. And he says that if councillors such as Naoise O'Muiri and Lucinda Creighton keep their campaigns up, it has a good chance of actually being funded as early as this November. I talked to him earlier this week about the issue.
"Looking around the council, I think that there will be very few people saying no to this," said Jackson. "It's not a lot of money. It's a very positive thing for everybody. It would be great if Dublin was to the fore of this."
"It's not a lot of money by today's standards. If it were to result in an advantage to investing in Dublin, it must be considered. You only have to look at how much the IDA spends at the moment attracting jobs. This is not a lot of money by comparison."
"It's important that Naoise [O'Muiri] brings it up in November. That's when the estimates are published. There are a lot of negotiations and debate in the eight weeks before that over funding and where money is to be sourced for various issues."
"We're no longer a low cost economy. Research and development is the way of the future."

This idea may be gaining momentum. (Picture taken by NoirinP.)

Cork City has no plans for free wi-fi

As Dublin City councillors come out of the woodwork to push proposals for a free citywide wi-fi network, Cork's city manager has no such aspirations. "No, that's not on our agenda," said a spokesman for the Council. "But we were ahead of Dublin anyway. We had a network in place with Smart Telecom since 2004."

100 hotspots for Bitbuzz

Bitbuzz has clocked up its 100th public wi-fi hotspot (the Guinness Storehouse). Congratulations to Alex, Steve and the guys. They're a hardworking, very entrepreneurial bunch and it's not easy to take on the big guns as a small independent set-up. (Can't wait for the low-price, mass market era of wi-fi! Hint, hint...)

Wi-fi's 3rd birthday in Ireland

Wi-fi -- wireless internet access from public hotspots -- celebrates its 3rd birthday in Ireland this week. A story on the BBC looks at compatibility issues. But for the Irish user, there is only one issue -- price. Put simply, it was launched at a ludicrous end-user price and, at up to e10 per hour, is today far too expensive to ever be successful.

The Cloud comes down to earth on wi-fi pricing

Looks like British operators are finally getting serious about making wi-fi a mass market product. The Cloud has introduced a new monthly subscription of £12 (€17) per month for unlimited use of any of its 7,000 hotspots around Britain. Its network is used by companies such as BT and O2, which operate Irish wi-fi hotspots. But some experts don't see an immediate impact on the Irish wi-fi market.
"As the Cloud do not have any Irish sites, I don't think this will impact on the Irish market," said Alex French of Irish wi-fi provider Bitbuzz.
"We would like to see pricing moving towards those levels, but they only make sense if people commit to ongoing contracts, like they do with DSL products. However, it's important to note that following last year's price shakeup across the market here, Ireland now has one of the most competitive wi-fi markets in Europe, especially for business travellers."

Three reasons why Starbucks’ Irish cafes suck for wifi

1. They’re crammed and over-congested. Whoever designed the layout of Starbucks Ireland's outlets has strayed hugely from its relaxed US design. Whereas American Starbucks stores are all about space, sofas and a feeling of comfort, its Irish venues are overpacked with small wooden tables and thin window counters (I have a call in to its Irish operation to ask about this). People have to excuse themselves to fellow patrons as they make their way through because of the general seating logjam. It’s disruptive and claustrophobic. The message seems less one of ‘hey, stick around for a while’ (appropriate to wifi-users) and more one of ‘just drink your coffee up and get out’.
2. They’re loud. In the US, the chain’s outlets have calming music and hushed tones, thanks to the design and atmosphere. In Dublin, it’s a tinny chattering cacophony, punctuated by the scraping of chairs on hard floors. And in the Harcourt Street outlet, the whole café shudders and reverberates every time a Luas passes by. Which is about once every six or seven minutes.
3. The whole thing is very expensive. First, there’s the coffee. Granted, it’s at least as good as Insomnia, Coffee Society or Café Sol. But €3.75 for a large coffee? You’d pay it if it was a passport to an hour’s happy laptop browsing. But, thanks to points 1 and 2 (above), that’s unlikely. Bear in mind that you also need either a €5-per-hour scratchcard to access the wifi or a subscription to Eircom’s wifi service (an incredible €80 per month if one isn't already an Eircom subscriber). 

Eircom lands Starbucks wifi account

Eircom has landed the Starbucks wifi account, YTS hears. So far, the monster coffee chain has four locations, all in Dublin, with its latest branch about to open in Harcourt Street.
Meanwhile, Eircom has informed us that it now has 696 active hotspots around the country. It also claims that a further 214 hotspots are "agreed and pending completion". This breaks down into 79 cafes, 104 bars, 147 hotels, 26 B&Bs, 202 payphones and 5 airports. But are hotels and B&Bs really "public hotspots"? Are payphones? Perhaps the real figure should be 188 (696 minus the hotels, payphones and B&Bs). Nevertheless, that still puts the telco out in front in the Irish wifi leagues, ahead of O2, BT and Bitbuzz.

Live in-flight TV takes off

Connexion By Boeing, the company behind wifi broadband access in planes, has launched a live inflight TV service. The signal will be received on passengers' laptops via wifi. Channels signed up are BBC World, Euronews, Eurosportnews, CNBC and MSNBC. The initial participating airlines are SAS, Lufthansa and JAL (Japan Airlines). The service won't be available from Dublin in the first wave. Pricing and more information on the service are here.