It’s wireless, why don’t I see the Internet? Or how does it all hang together?

Wireless city concept
You got a shiny wireless notebook computer, booted it up and tried to get on the Internet and nothing! It’s wireless, so why doesn’t it work?

Not like the movies, eh? In movies people open a notebook computer absolutely anywhere (in the middle of a desert even) and are online in seconds, lightning fast, you never see a wire of any sort… then they save the world with a few key strokes… As I said, that’s ‘in movies’!

[Edited: Much has changed since this post was published. Wireless services are a lot more wide-spread and sophisticated, and we are using many more devices to connect. But I am still explaining to the older generation of friends how the basic premise of wireless connection works. For that reason I’ll leave this post here.]

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