The folks at Victrola Cafe & Art were already sick of talking about Wi-Fi--I dare not guess how they feel now: A colleague tipped me to Victrola turning off Wi-Fi on weekends, and I published a short interview with one of the owners on my site. That built through links from other sites, and I've wound up writing about it for the New York Times in a story that appears in Monday's Business section (June 13).
Meanwhile, National Public Radio's All Things Considered picked it up for today's broadcast (Sunday).
The owners and staff are incredibly nice people, and just seeing them interact with their regulars the other morning when I stopped by to interview them in person and when the photo was taken it was clear that they had a loyal group. One regular with a laptop was only half-jokingly concerned that if he made it into the photograph in print it would be captioned that he was a villain. (I assured him it would not.)
The media attention focused on Victrola is certainly partly my fault, but it's also testament to the power of a simple idea expressed in cultural terms. It's very likely that Victrola's move will spark a mini-trend in which cafes point to Victrola as their motivation for trying out limiting Wi-Fi service when it doesn't work for them.
The folks at Victrola had a slightly hilarious idea: a house roast they would call Wi-Fi. If someone called and asked if they had Wi-Fi, they could say yes. When customers tried to find out about Wi-Fi, they could serve them coffee. They were only half-kidding. I imagine a Wi-Fi blend would be a great mail-order gift item.
Glenn:
Great piece! I was a bit disturbed by the misleading Financial Times article about this (details: http://www.cheesebikini.com/archives/001103.html) but your article was much better informed and more enlightening.
But -- in this weblog posting, I'm concerned by the last sentence: "It’s very likely that Victrola’s move will spark a mini-trend in which cafes point to Victrola as their motivation for trying out limiting Wi-Fi service when it doesn’t work for them."
Can we assume that wi-fi won't "work for them?" The evidence in Seattle and San Francisco suggests the opposite. (Hundreds of cafes in these cities offer wi-fi, more add wi-fi service each month -- but we know of just a few cafes experimenting with turning it off during certain periods).
In future, Cafes in general might limit wi-fi access times, or they might not. But right now, all the data I've seen shows overwhelmingly that this isn't happening.
In any case, bravo on the NYT piece which is the most informative coverage of this I've seen yet in the mainstream media.
[Editor's note: I suggest it might start a mini-trend out of the 3,500 estimated free Wi-Fi cafes, with some relying on this and other articles to make the leap. In talking to cafes and hotspot operators, it's really clear that some of them want a non-technological solution to overuse--no print out with a code number or fancy (if free) captive portal. So I think we might see more, but still a small number, of cafes throttling back at certain times.--gf]