Living in a Disconnected Bubble in Munich: DLD Unplugged…and No WiFi

I am composing this blogpost at the DLD conference in Munich, Germany, convened by Burda Media. DLD stands for Digital Life Design, and many of the names you would expect are here, about 1000 people representing all the players in the connected world today.

And yet I am having a similar experience to that at CES 2006, when I saw dozens of WiFi networks but none would allow me to connect, see my posting "Water, Water, Everywhere, Not a drop to Drink.” I ideologically do not carry a Blackberry or any other always on device, because I know that for most people these are prohibitively expensive, and because they are addictive (and distracting in public). So I depend these days on finding stable WiFi to connect.

 

When I first arrived in Munich and checked into my hotel, the trouble started. I picked the hotel from Hotels.com, because it advertised WiFi, was cheap, and short walk from conference venue. Turns out the hotel was practicing marketing using Bait and Switch, claiming it “offered Wifi,” but it was additional fee. OK, I said, am prepared to pay. But then they explain that I needed to load some special software from a CD (I kid you not). I immediately called Hotels.com, and rebooked myself into nice hotel (for few dollars more, but WiFi included!!!).

 

At conference expected to have ubiquitous WiFi…and instead what I found (while listening to CEOof Deutche Telekom speak about seamless mobile connectivity) is that the WiFi network was overloaded, incapable of the traffic being generated. Could barely get websites to load. For techies out there, see ping results (when I could get connected, which took a few tries):

 

 

 

For the rest of you, what the above numbers tell us is that the WiFi network at DLD is incapable of supporting VoIP, Video streaming, or any other real time web service. In fact, wrote this blog off-line in word to prevent losing it when trying to post (I usually use on-line Typepad tools from SixApart). 

All this got me thinking that we are so far from the promised land in some many ways. In time I will try to address all of these, and in some way am working to cure these issues, for now just going to highlight:

-Connectivity has a long way to go before, outside some bubbles (office, some universities, etc.) we in the Western world are far from “always on”

-Most people in the world, even if they have a mobile phone that gives them some voice communications, are still cut off from broadband world (further digital divide)

-Often hype creates value way before reality is there. Sure, there are the Googles that manage to score big from revenue point of view, but infrastructure is a blocking point for many