Quest for coffee and a hot spot can leave you steaming

Not so long ago, before I bought my first BlackBerry phone, I easily survived without a wireless internet connection - so long as I could check my email on my laptop every night.

But now that I have more and more tasks to oversee, from managing my online store to updating my social networking accounts to being in touch with my editors, I feel frustrated when I am disconnected from the internet.

Two months ago, when my phone failed to connect to the internet in London, I was unable to reply to an important email from my editor, who had urgently requested a column.

Not only did I feel guilty, but I also felt unprofessional. Luckily, my editor, who has faced similar connectivity difficulties, understood and extended my deadline.

It seemed in the past few years that the growing availability of free Wi-Fi connections in shopping malls and cafes would save me the drama of buying a laptop internet SIM card or a USB antenna, which my friends found to be pricey if not used properly. And you cannot depend on them when you most need them on the road.

Almost anywhere in the world, shopping malls and cafes such as Starbucks and Caribou Café offer free internet connections. And other places are joining in as well. Even better, numerous airports and train services offer free Wi-Fi.

I was a big fan of that service on trains while I lived in England. However, this Wi-Fi trend proved too good to be true. These days, I find most free public connections to be barely usable.

I recently rode the train from Leeds to Manchester and found the free Wi-Fi service slow at best for the entire trip. At certain points the connection was cut off.

I spent most of the time trying to connect, and when I did, pages took forever to load. If I had known the connection would be terrible, I would have grabbed Cecelia Ahern's latest novel or my iPod to unwind - one of the reasons for that little getaway.

Instead, I found myself irritated with the Wi-Fi problem, which prevented me from managing some of my business tasks and darkened my mood for the rest of the day.

On another train trip with a different rail company, I discovered that to connect to Wi-Fi I had to know a password - which was available on the company's website. Unfortunately, the cabin supervisor did not know the password, so I had to postpone some research.

Of course, there have been times when the connection was good and I could get some work done, but those were mainly during off-peak train trips.

One of my worst Wi-Fi experiences involved trying to buy a ticket to attend the musical Wicked in London. I connected to the ticket site via a Wi-Fi network and the page timed out while I was selecting seats.

I refreshed the page and the site slowly reloaded - taking me back to the home page. I lost the seats I had been selecting.

For a while, I thought I was the only one facing regular frustrations with Wi-Fi hot spots. But to my surprise, many of my acquaintances have faced similar dramas.

I love to sit in cafes to finish some tasks, and I have encountered many customers frustrated with the quality of the Wi-Fi, especially when the cafes are packed with people playing YouTube videos.

Starbucks is one of the cafes that have decent internet connections, which is one reasonthat it is always busy with people who have already had their coffee and are typing away on their laptops.

For me, that leaves McDonald's as the second-best option for a widely available, free and reliable internet connection, though I doubt that I would be able to concentrate amid the hustle and bustle of a McDonald's.

I believe one of the main reasons for this problem is the ever increasing demand for wireless internet connectivity, especially among frequent tweeters.

When retailers and restaurants introduced Wi-Fi a few years ago to pull in customers, their wireless connections were good relative to demand.

Back then, customers did not carry tablets and smartphones and were not streaming YouTube videos. Cisco Systems reported that the last year's global mobile traffic was three times the size of global internet traffic in 2000.

Poor connectivity has increased user dissatisfaction with Wi-Fi in some establishments, causing some customers to opt for other eateries and retailers - bad news for the businesses losing the customers.

At this point, my friends would argue that I could always work via my BlackBerry's or iPhone's data link with the phone company.

But I just cannot function that way. I am pretty old-fashioned and love to type on the keyboard of a laptop.

Providers of public Wi-Fi should invest in better connectivity, and bear in mind that demand is constantly increasing.

Until then, however, I will make sure I carry a good book to help me kill time whenever Wi-Fi is messing with me.

Manar Al Hinai is a fashion designer and writer. She can be followed on Twitter @manar_alhinai