if hotel owner think they can ask for 5 - 7€ per hour for wifi or 12€ per day to be connected a little bit, it's easy to stay offline and to invest in food instead. "there is a life outside the screen" (sherman). back to the 1990s.

edit: internet use in hotels rose significantly 2009

● God, the ISO and the ITU rested ● The geeks got up early on Sunday morning and built the Internet | Nigel Titley: In the Beginning

rob blokzijl: some internet history and what happened before. slides at uknof and text at ripe58, amsterdam - as i assume.

~1850: russia: 450km, five words per minute. (cables laid in shallow stretch of water and on land) 1866: neufundland - scotland: 4000km. 40 words in 21 minutes (source: max jüllig, die kabeltelegraphie, 1884)

the 1980s and its slogan: "internet in the sky“: 1980s: european satellite projects: stella (satellite transmission experiment linking laboratories, a cost 11bis project), universe (a uk project) and finally satine (a cost 11ter project, carried out by CERN, RAL, Desy, Saclay, CNUCE, TU Graz, UC and TC Dublin, JRC Ispra): 8mb/s
1990s: iridium, a motorola project. loved by the technitians, hated by the management: bankrupcy 1998: costs: $ 6Bill sold for $ 25Mill to the boeing company on behalf of dod.
1995: 840 satellites, up- 100mb/s, downlink: 720mb/s; but the teledesic network never came true as bill gates and craig mccaw dreamed of it in approx. 1990 ...