[Air-l] internet cafes

[Bunz, Ulla K]

In the last three months, I've traveled a bit. I've been at the following
airports: Kansas City, Minneapolis, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Seattle, Newark,
Frankfurt (Germany), Cologne (Germany), Amsterdam (Netherlands), and
Stavanger (Norway). I'm also familiar with airports in major cities such as
Munich, Brussels, London, Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Sydney, and
Auckland.

And yet, at all these airports, one thing is missing.

How come I can't remember seeing any Internet Cafes in any of these
airports? Traveling across the globe I have become quite proficient at
computer-spotting. And sure, there are ads one one dot something or other
plastered all over the place. But what if I should feel the urgent desire to
act upon one of these ads (don't they wish)?! 

Has no one thought about this before? Is this an unexplored business niche
that some Jeff Bezos has to act upon? Are there laws restricting web use in
airports? Doesn't anyone else care? Or am I just blind? Certainly I can't be
the only person who'd like to check their email on a two or three hour
lay-over?

I'm wondering: Can anyone think of an airport that HAS an Internet cafe? If
so, do you know who runs it? If not, does anyone know why this lack exists?
I've always wanted to do an ethnography on relationship formation and
maintenance among long-term backpackers (there's five main types of people,
and two main types of relationships, which are maintained mainly through
email). Maybe we need a study on information acquisition of frequent
flyers/travelers?  There's all this time to spend while waiting, and yet, we
arrive at our destination trying to catch up. In this time and age, there's
something wrong with that, don't you think?

ulla the vagabond