San Francisco Consult

Wifi access in Paris

This post is under the Entrepreneurship category, because, as an entrepreneur developping an online service who works from home for now, I need to get out of the house to work on a regular basis. Why? To be surrounded by the noise and people I no longer have to face at the office and come to miss once in a while. As of February 2008, I can say that wifi access in Paris has improved greatly , thanks to the Adael wifi provider. They seem to have developped well in a number of cafés and restaurants in the Paris area and have the kind of pricing that can bring people to pay for Wifi.

They offer an initial 20 minutes free of charge without any account creation, a 60 minute session free session with the creation of an account and a monthly subscription plan with no long term obligation (really!) for 12 euros a month ( down to 9 euros if you susbscribe for 6 months).

In the triangle d’Or area, ie, the area around the Champs Elysées, the beautiful Chez Francis brasserie offers wifi access through Adael and in a number of chic neighbourhoods in Paris ( the 9th, the 8th and the 6th arondissements), the clean-cut, healthy and modern Cojean chain of lunch cafés all offer wifi through Adael.

One can finally eat, drink and surf the web in settings with character!

In another genre, I’ve heard ( but not tested) of a new connected public work space in Paris called La Cantine, co owned by two non profits concerned with the web, the Fing and Silicon Sentier. It’s designed for those who wish to have a  web ready work space for a few hours a day on a reservation basis as well as for those needing a meeting space with all the techie bells and whistles.  As of Febuary 2008, it was not very reactive to requests for reservations via email…Swamped by excess demand?