Pajama Entrepreneur

I am in London for the Wireless Event. It’s a beautiful summer day so I’ve decided to work outdoors and use The Cloud’s Wi-Fi hotzone which covers The City of London — not London in general, but that little district that encompasses the Inns of Court and St. Paul’s Cathedral.

First, I went to Gray’s Inn, one of the Inns of Court where my favorite barrister, Rumpole of the Bailey (a fictional character from John Mortimer’s novels), would have had his office. I sat on one of the benches in the small garden within Gray’s Inn, opened my Nokia N800 and . . . no signal from The Cloud’s network. I opened my iBook and found a weak signal. Somehow I doubt Horace Rumpole would have even owned a laptop and bothered about Wi-Fi but then again, he would definitely have been enraged by all the wireless cameras hanging over London. There are cameras everywhere!

Then, I went across the street and sat outside Vino, an Italian cafe restaurant on Gray’s Inn Road. I got a very strong signal from The Cloud’s network there, but could not log on. Network error, it says. I have no idea what that means.

Finally, 30 minutes into this seemingly fruitless and frustrating exercise, I walked to the intersection of High Holborn Street and Gray’s Inn Road. I sat outside Caffe Nero, a few meters from the Tube stop Chancery Lane, and opened my laptop. Finally, a signal and connectivity!

I have no idea why the network doesn’t allow me to log on just a few hundred meters from Caffe Nero in a location far more pleasant than the busy High Holborn.

Now, the famous speed test. I am getting 5 Mbps downstream and 500 Kbps upstream, which isn’t bad.