Ahh, free public wifi — it goes rather well with that overly-sweet yet amazingly satisfying cup of iced Thai milk tea in the lobby of your trendy boutique hotel by the Bangkok riverside, or as a companion to that ridiculously good whiskey based cocktail whipped up with precision and uncompromising care by your bartender in downtown Osaka. Time to unwind, catch up, post some photos, clear the email backlog…. Perfect! Yet this rather chilled setting is all too often the set up of a rather frustrating period of troubleshooting your connection (am I connected yet…? Yes…? Damn! Still not working!) or much worse and infinitely more annoying, the scene of one of the most common sites of data theft and myriad fraudulent hacking schemes.

Thai Iced Tea — So much better when the free WiFi works!

In a 2016 study of the quality of publicly available wifi hotspots in 172 countries worldwide, just one of the countries in the top 20 was in Asia — the tiny, tropical, ultra modern city-state of Singapore — with the majority of top rated countries located in Europe. It may come as a surprise to many, that despite the leaps and bounds taken in improving infrastructure across Asia in recent years, the region still markedly lags behind in the quality and security of publicly available wifi. It’s worth noting that this lag is significant in the more developed economies of the region as well as those that are still in earlier stages of development.

The reasons for this are not immediately obvious, yet with a little deeper investigation, the main underlying causes can be revealed. Let’s take a look at the primary factors which have led to the current fragmented, patchy, risk-filled landscape that we’re faced with today.

1. Public wifi is a localised technology

The entities that most often are involved in creating and supporting the infrastructure behind public wifi networks are regional governments and businesses, such as city administrations. The reality of the users of public wifi, however, is that they are people who are not stuck in one place. They are people on the move, part of the dynamic flows between and across regions and boundaries. Unfortunately, at the same time, the systems created at the local level so enjoy the same freedom as their human users and have difficulty scaling and meshing with those created by other regional entities, in another city, or in another state. This is perhaps one of the primary reasons why we see most of the countries which consistently provide the best quality of public wifi access being located in the unified regulatory and economic market of the European Union.

2. Scaling public wifi and achieving quality beyond localised sites is complicated

Current systems do not scale well, and the model of centralised investment for initial setup and then ongoing management of sites runs into problems when spread across more diverse geographies and and administrative entities. This issue is exacerbated in the context of Asia, where there is such a broad range of political systems, economic models and levels of development. Things have improved in recent years with multilateral trade and cooperation agreements such as APEC coming into effect, however there is still a huge diversity present.

3. Data security implementation and policing is lacking in weaker states

One of the reasons why a surprising number of travellers return from their dream vacation or productive business trip in South East Asia to find that serious financial or identity fraud has been committed against them is that it is too easy for criminals to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the sorry state of much of the public wifi infrastructure in place.

Local access points in hotels, restaurants and bars are often running older models of routers still on their default admin login credentials. It’s a simple operation for a novice hacker to replace the firmware on the device with custom firmware, which then gives them better access to install malware on your device and steal/commandeer your data. In a different but equally threatening scenario, a malicious device may be set up to imitate a legitimate public wifi hotspot, gaining the trust of unsuspecting free wifi hunters with an innocent sounding name such as ‘Public Wifi’. These situations are unfortunately much more common in states where weak rule of law, constricted law enforcement budgets as well as corruption and kickbacks all conspire to make such violations low on the list of priorities for policing.

Data security is a significant concern on many public WiFi networks in Asia

What to do? Are large parts of the globe doomed to have inconsistent, low quality and security hole ridden public wifi for the foreseeable future? At Iungo Network, we believe the answer to this question is no, and we are actively working to implement our unique solution worldwide. Decentralized platform technology built on the blockchain comes with many grand promises and claims of world-changing potential. Few, however, have realised concrete approaches for how to do so. Iungo has recognised that a well-engineered, truly decentralised public wifi offering that is conceived and designed to scale across borders and macro regions is a perfect application of a decentralised service platform and token economy.

The more challenges that exist in the current service landscape, the more excited we get, as the more scope and justification we have to radically change the prospects for web users everywhere. Many still do not few access to secure, high quality internet wherever they are as a basic human right. We do, and we expect that as our progress continues and we progress further along our roadmap, many more people, in Asia and elsewhere, will soon agree.

To find out more about Iungo, visit our website at Iungo.network.