Even in large cities, availability of wifi can be very hit or miss. Based on my completely anecdotal data from a few different cities, the wifi situation was a

Even in large cities, availability of wifi can be very hit or miss. Based on my completely anecdotal data from a few different cities, the wifi situation was actually quite a bit better a couple of years ago than it is today. Granted, the number of wifi points you can see keeps growing, but the percentage of them that are locked down has also increased, so there's actually less points available. Part of this is people getting wise to security, which is overall a good thing (if inconvenient for a harmless wifi poacher that just wants to check his own email). But increasingly this is also due to retail places putting limits on or eliminating their wifi due to realizing it tends to result in people who are more loiterers than customers.