The Pains and Risks of Looking for Public Wifi

Traveling across multiple countries, it often makes very little sense to purchase Sim cards in every destination.  Without it, one's smartphone would not be able to take advantage of mobile Internet networks available to local carriers, instead strictly relying on whatever wifi networks that can be obtained for free and for a fee in public and private institutions.  The constant search and usage of these wifi networks are a unique sight and experience in travel nowadays.

It goes without saying that the availability and quality of wifi vary from place to place.  Some countries have been in particular been very good about launching wifi hotspots in public locations such as bus terminals, public squares, parks, and especially airports.  International travelers demand constant Internet access, and wifi seems to be a cheap way to score good impressions with these travelers, who can then pass on good impressions to their friends to bring in more tourists in the future.

Similarly, private locations have used wifi as major draw to bring in customers.  In many restaurants, bars, and especially hostels, wifi for guests has steadily become more common, particularly in locations frequented by tourists.  The wide availability of WiFi in both public and private places mean that many tourists can constantly use the Internet to make themselves feel at home (and support their travels with on-time bookings, translations, and reviews).

The quality of the wifi networks at hand, though, is another matter.  Public networks are almost by default much slower than any private ones as many people crowd into them and eat away at available bandwidths.  In some locales, the Internet providers simply are not set up to handle that much traffic from different sources at the same time.  Some users are dropped from wifi while others, while connected, simply cannot load any page (or really, do anything).

Simultaneously, users of the same wifi networks are exposing themselves to security risks by using unencrypted networks.  Everyone access private information on the Internet, ranging from more harmless ones like Tinder profiles and Facebook posts to more sensitive ones like bank accounts and online reservations with credit cards.  Even knowing that there is potential for the unscrupulous to pilfer sensitive data off these public networks, sometimes traveling necessitate access to the same sensitive data.

It is a sort of pain, both in the short- and long-term, that modern travelers dependent on Internet use have come to embrace, or at the very least, frustratingly tolerate.  They love their Internet and smartphone apps too much, and too dependent on them for their just in-time convenience, for their not being used just because there are a few slow loading pages and abstract/far-away data risks.  They cannot imagine life without swiping through their smartphones during the lulls of travel.

Perhaps technological developments in the coming years will mitigate some of the risks.  Personal encryption that come with mobile devices can make security less of a concern.  And perhaps as more countries adopt 4G and 5G technologies, wifi will become much faster, as the infrastructure sustaining wifi networks will be much stronger in handling large amounts of traffic.  Technology would ensure that the frustrations of contemporary travelers with public wifi will not remain big in the future.

But what technology will not change, and also do not have the incentive to change, is people's continued dependence on wifi in public areas.  There will always be (and more of) international travelers who are not plugged into local mobile Internet providers, and there will always be need for information that needs to be readily accessed via the Internet.  Faster and less risky wifi will unlikely satisfy these travelers for long, as they will always demand better, faster, more secure access to information, wherever and whenever.