internet - Wifi takes off in Shanghai

Wireless access or Wifi is - fortunately - become the next big thing in Shanghai, reports Wang Jianshuo, one of the city's most famous bloggers in an article that compares different public services. Free access is still not the norm in Shanghai, but Jianshuo gives some good tips on easy access to Wifi from some popular spots like Starbucks and KFC in Xujiahui.
I might have been spoiled by the free services many US universities can offer - with Harvard as a notable exeption, very hard to get online there without hacking their systems. In some of the university areas private wireless broadcasting systems fight for bandwidth. The good thing is that you can often just open your computer and lift along on the broadband connection of somebody else. No harm to this other person, since capacity is anyway mostly abundant. But when too many senders compete for bandwidth, they sometimes push each other out of the air, making the connection rather unstable.
In that kind of cases the government should step in and provide wireless access, I feel, just like water and gas.