Do you have wifi?

Is it just me, or is there now an innate expectation that most pubs, restaurants, hotels and anywhere else you have to spend a fair amount of time, will have wifi? Even my hairdresser has wifi.

And yet there are still those quaint businesses who are determined not to buy into this new-fangled technology of the twenty-first century. When you ask the owners of such establishments whether they have wifi they almost seem proud of the fact that they don't. However, approach the staff, who are probably asked several times a day, and they are somewhat more contrite at this obvious oversight.

Don't get me wrong, I am not a big fan of being 'on' at all times. By this I mean the inability to ever switch off, be still and be out of touch once in a while. However, this has very little to do with wifi or not to wifi. Wifi is now the ubiquitous medium for us to access our 'stuff' be that newspapers, magazines, books, music, film, ideas and notes. Increasingly, as more of our 'stuff' is stored in fluffy clouds, we will need wifi to access it. Businesses that don't get this will simply be left behind.

I was in the pub today at a 'business-cum-christmas-catch-up' meeting and there was no wifi! I guarantee you we will not be meeting there again, nor would we consider it to be a viable venue for future events, because without wifi it is simply sub par and most definitely behind the curve.

Unless BT Openzone fills in the gap, I predict that businesses that do not get with the programme will simply be left behind. Love it or loathe it, Wifi is going to be more important than having a telephone.