I’ve always maintained that people in Kuala Lumpur were a spoilt lot when it came to Internet access. In my travels over the past couple of years, I have struggled to get Internet access at certain places – even in as big cities as London, New York and Paris. And to think that I’m happy to pay for my access, if the service is reasonably priced.

In Kuala Lumpur, you’re bound to find Internet almost anywhere in the city. If you’re walking past a row of shops, chances are you can turn your wifi on and find a connection from a nearby restaurant or store – and this is usually free. In other countries, I tend to look for the nearest Apple store to “borrow” the wifi-service when I desperately need to get online.

It would be lying if I said I never took KL’s easy access to the Internet for granted, but at the same time, I appreciate the fact that it is value-added service by the owners of restaurants and stores.

Picture taken from miniyo73 on Flickr under the Creative Common License.

Perhaps this is why I am a little uncomfortable after reading reports (or another here from TNW) that Dewan Bandaraya Kuala Lumpur (City Hall) has made it compulsory from April 2012 for restaurants (larger than 120 sq m) to be wifi-equipped if they wanted to have their business license approved.

As a customer, and one who relies a lot on the Internet, this would seem like the perfect implementation. I can see some benefits – from convenience for the casual users to being a great service for people who work from outside the traditional office settings. It helps to entertain anyone who is waiting for a someone else.

However, I would like to suggest a few questions for consideration:

1. Will this encourage eating alone?

I’m starting with this because it’s the flimsiest of issues but one that I think is still pertinent. Ever since smartphones (and by extension, social media) hit the mainstream, there has been numerous arguments about how there is much less face-to-face interactions than previously.

The most common complain is from family members who have meals together, but at any point of the meal, someone or other will be on their phone – either replying emails, text messages, Tweets or updating the Facebook statuses.

Having access to the Internet so widespread would encourage this behaviour and many other “anti-social” scenarios technophobes can come up with.

2. Who’s going to pay for the service?

The reports do not mention if the services these restaurants would be free or not. This could lead to several issues, monetary wise.

First of all, if the service is free, then the burden is on the restauranteurs to pay for the service. There is a chance that this cost will be included into the price of the meals which means that people who are not using the service too would have to pay for something they do not use. It would be unfair to expect owners to take money out of their own pockets (unless, as I said earlier, if this was part of their marketing strategy to provide a value-added service).

If this service is chargeable, then I see two potential issues:

a. Would the restaurants have to run their own backend payment system? Or would they rely on current providers for this service? If it’s the latter, would there just be one company (leading to monopoly issues) where it will be easy for users to sign up for just one account, or many companies which would give users the dilemma of having multiple accounts etc. I’m not even going to consider how inconvenient one time payments are going to be.

b. Will this then lead to current places that offer free wifi – restaurants, McDonald’s, Starbucks and more – to start charging? After all, if other people are charging, why shouldn’t they? After all, in the case of McDonald’s and Starbucks, Internet access is chargeable in some countries, if I am not mistaken.

3. Why doesn’t DBKL stick to it’s current WirelessKL?

The reports also mention the fact that DBKL had a two-year contract with Packet-One Networks (the people behind P1 Wimax) to provide 1,500 free wifi spots around the city which will be discontinued once the contract ends.

I wonder why DBKL doesn’t just stick to this arrangement (unless Packet-One doesn’t want to continue providing the service)? It would then make wifi available in generic areas instead of just restaurants and there would be the burden on the restauranteurs.

Then again, if you’re anything like me and have tried logging on to the WirelessKl service in the past, you would realise that it never barely works anyway, so maybe this is a good thing.

4. What about the telcos?

I also wonder what implications this would have on telcos who offer mobile Internet services. Let’s not talk about wifi-on-the-go dongles, but this policy could affect the number of people who sign up for mobile Internet on the phones.

This might be a long shot, but it could have implications on pricing and packages from telcos in the future – if there are less people signing up for the service, then competition is less stiff and current customers (like myself) might not get great deals out of it.

Granted, it could go either way, as these telcos might need to make their packages even more enticing to encourage people to keep their mobile Internet service, or to sign up for it.

5. Should we really be legislating these things? 

My final question is whether we should be legislating these sorts of things. It’s one thing to make necessities compulsory when one wants a business license (such as fire exits, crowd control policies, health and cleaniness) but I worry about what kind of precedent this might set in terms of things that can be policed by City Hall in the future.

The intention by Mayor Tan Sri Ahmad Fuad Ismail might be great – after all, technology and doing things on the Internet is all the rage at the moment – but truth be told, I would rather City Hall take care of other issues more pertinent to our daily lives. Or, if there was the need for the technology focus, how about putting access to the Internet in schools or providing the urban poor with such access so as to close the digital divide?

Note: When the plans were first discussed, some restauranteurs commented that they were fine with it, according to this report.