[patio11]

$30 a month makes this "public service" a toy for highly paid commuters

I don't think you have to be that highly paid at all for this to make a whole lot of sense. 30 minutes a workday is 10 hours a month, minimum, spent on rapid transit. That time is lost to you unless you have some way to make use of it -- and the Internet for time-shifting either productive labor or errands makes a whole lot of sense.

I have roughly 4 hours of daily commute (yay, Japan) and would give my spleen to have sustained connectivity (and room to open a laptop). It would give me essentially two workweeks for free -- and believe me, I'd put them to use.