There was a time when asking, “Do you have Wi-Fi?” got you the same look you’d get if you’d just asked to borrow a socket wrench in a sushi bar. Back then, connectivity wasn’t assumed—it was a pleasant surprise. Today? It’s the first thing people ask for when they walk into a coffee shop, often before they even decide between a cappuccino or cold brew.
Sitting in a café recently, watching a steady stream of customers request the Wi-Fi password like it was part of the drink order, it hit me: connectivity isn’t a perk anymore. It’s plumbing. Like water and electricity, it’s just expected to be there—and heaven help the business that forgets that.
I remember when Wi-Fi was a marketing hook. Hotels bragged about it in bold letters on their websites. Airports charged for it like it was champagne. Even cafés used it to lure freelancers and travelers—“Free Wi-Fi!” was as powerful as “Happy Hour!” Today, it’s not about having it. It’s about how good it is—and if it’s not, people walk. Fast.
This isn’t just a shift in tech—it’s a shift in human behavior. Wi-Fi didn’t just untether us; it redefined what “being somewhere” means. The café isn’t just a café anymore—it’s an office, a studio, a command center for life. The table next to the espresso machine is as likely to host a Zoom meeting as a latte. And restaurants? They’re now part of our digital mesh, not just culinary destinations.
For the hospitality industry, Wi-Fi has gone from a differentiator to a requirement. It’s table stakes. Literally. Try running a restaurant, hotel, or bar without it and you’ll see customers walk out faster than a bad Yelp review spreads. We’ve built an attention economy where a dropped signal feels like oxygen deprivation.
Back in the 2000s I remember giving a WiFi router to Mark Williamson, owner of the famed Willi’s Wine Bar in Paris, so I could enjoy wine and work at the bar. It may have been the first wine bar with WiFi in the world.
But here’s the irony—and I’ve written about this kind of tech paradox before: in our quest to stay always connected, we’ve made connection itself the new dependency. We choose cafés not for the coffee but for the bandwidth. We linger where the signal is strong, flee from dead zones like they’re black holes. The Wi-Fi signal has replaced the neon “OPEN” sign as the indicator of modern life.
So where do we go from here? With 5G maturing and satellite internet pushing coverage into every corner of the planet, the idea of location-based connectivity might soon be outdated. Will Wi-Fi go the way of dial-up and DSL—useful, but forgotten?
Maybe. But for now, Wi-Fi remains the unsung infrastructure of our daily lives. It’s invisible, yet omnipresent. It’s the bridge between our physical and digital worlds. And for all the progress it represents, it’s also a mirror—showing us just how intertwined our lives have become with the networks we ride on.
The Wi-Fi revolution didn’t just connect devices. It connected habits, people, and expectations. And like every revolution, we didn’t notice it happening until it was complete.
Wi-Fi won. Quietly. Completely.
The question now is—did we?