I don’t know what other people’s experiences are, but increasingly I’m finding that it makes sense for me to use my phone’s wireless hotspot feature as my internet connection in cafes instead of the provided wifi.
The biggest difference I see is that with the phone my ping times are routinely in the 60-70 millisecond range, whereas cafe wifi in a busy cafe can see ping times at 1000 ms or more (looking at you, Starbucks).
My phone has a bandwidth cap so I don’t know if I can keep this up all month, and it’s always better to use a fast free unlimited connection than a limited one that you bring yourself. I’m just wondering if this is a sign of a long-term trend where the wifi that you carry with yourself everywhere is faster, more reliable, and less error-prone than the “free” public infrastructure.
Edward Vielmetti's Wordpress weblog 