[ipdashc]

Not all of us have cell plans with hotspots ($$$), hotspots often have data caps, cell is often slower or congested, and there are some areas without cell signal. It's also kind of silly from a wider perspective to shove everyone onto the cellular network when most businesses have perfectly decent fiber internet nowadays.

Sure, I'm usually on hotspot, but I personally appreciate when businesses have wifi. Either way, there are always going to be shared networks somewhere.

[miki123211]

What we should actually be doing is WiFi using SIM cards as authentication.

Have it count against your data cap (but make it much cheaper than cellular data). Pay part of that revenue to hotspot-owning businesses. If something bad happens, use the logs that telecoms are already required to keep.

It's very strange to me that we don't have something like this already.

[lxgr]

How about we don't? We really don't need to tie even more things to SIM cards and phone numbers.

Criminals have more than enough ways to still get anonymous SIM cards (at least until every country on the planet makes KYC mandatory for prepaid SIMs), and legitimate users are greatly inconvenienced by this.

> Pay part of that revenue to hotspot-owning businesses.

To subsidize a network connection they probably already need for their business operations, e.g. their payment terminal or POS? Why should I? The marginal cost of an incremental byte on wired Internet connections is basically zero, these days. It's literally too cheap to meter, so why bother?

Besides the centralization and tracking concerns, not nearly every device has a SIM card. Why does my Laptop not deserve to access a coffee shop Wi-Fi, my Kindle to use an in-flight conenction, or my smartwatch to use the gym's network for podcasts?

It's very strange to me that people keep trying to willingly ruin the open Internet.