overview

This page considers cybercafes.

It covers -

• introduction
• history
• statistics
• culture and community
• the business of cyber
• the Australian industry

There is a separate note on telecentres (aka telecottages or teleservice centres).

     introduction

A cybercafe (aka an internet cafe or PC cafe) is a commercial venue where members of the public can access the net for a fee, usually per hour or minute. Some cafes offer unmetered wireless access. The venue will generally offer beverages and food. Declining connectivity prices in Australia and in other advanced economies mean that most cybercafes now often base their revenue on retailing comestibles - and services such as scanning and binding - rather than bytes.

Telecottages are more likely to be in rural locations, often run on a voluntary basis (sometimes with government support), may offer subsidised ICT training and are often associated with other community facilities.

Internet kiosks - the public phone boxes of the 2000s - are coin or card-operated devices that offer metered access to the net.

Cybercafes and kiosks are located world-wide, although they tend to cluster in major population centres and locations such as airports.

One reporter comments that

there are thousands of internet cafés of all shapes and sizes, all over the world from city centres to small villages to the depths of the jungle and even on remote mountains sides. From simple beginnings the internet café concept has brought access and communication to local people and travellers alike and now it's hard to imagine life without them.

Uses of cybercafes vary. John Stewart's 2000 Cafematics: the Cybercafe and the Community (PDF) notes that cybercafes are social meeting points, with many customers considering the atmosphere and opportunity to be with friends an important reason for use. That is consistent with the history of cafes, bars and other meeting places.

Use by travellers is significant, with many people visiting them when away from home or the office to access mail, catch up with news or make travel arrangements. Some of them are also used for multiplayer games (with machines on the cafe's LAN or linked via the net to players at another site).

     history

The precursors of the cybercafe appeared in the early 1990s, typically as venues that featured personal computers - sometimes coin-operated - allowing access to bulletin boards. (Assertions that the "first cybercafe" was opened in 1984 have not been substantiated.)

Cafe Cyberia, often claimed as the world's first cybercafe, opened in London's West End in September 1994. Despite expectations that it would advance online feminism, it gained attention as a fashionable venue and supposedly as "one of the only places in central London where you could get a decent cup of coffee". That is perhaps ironic, given the nastiness of the coffee available from later cybercafes.

The simplicity of the model - connectivity, coffee, cake and a cash register - saw adoption across the world, with what is claimed as Australia's first cybercafe - Cybernet - opening in Melbourne and Suba launched as the first North American cybercafe during early 1995. By mid-1995 there appear to have been around 60 cybercafes operating in Australia, North America and Europe. Around 350 telecottages or 'teleservice centres' were in operation globally at that time.

Growth reflected -

• the internet boom, in particular perceptions that being 'online' was an easy way for entrepreneurs and investors to make money
• increased availability and lower cost of connectivity and personal computers
• increasing media coverage and personal exposure

By 1997 there appear to be several thousand cybercafes across the globe, most in North America (some estimates suggest 25% of the global total) and Western Europe. Some were large-scale, with for example Stelios Haji-Ioannou of the Easy cybercafe chain operating a 500 PC venue in New York's Times Square.

Uptake in the 'South' - eg in Latin America - has been slower, although scholars such as Anikar Haseloff in the thoughtful 2005 Cybercafes and their Potential as Community Development Tools in India paper suggest that their influence is potentially greater than their numbers.

The number of cafes in the West may have declined since a peak in the late 1990s, as more people went online at home, cybercafes (particularly those with fixed rather than wireless connections) ceased to be hip and operators realised that many consumers were more interested in the cafe than the cyber.

     statistics

Statistics about the diffusion and current number of cybercafes are problematical because of uncertainties in definition and the absence of authoritative measurement mechanisms.

Government statistical agencies and commercial metrics groups, for example, have not been collecting and publishing national statistics about the number of cafes and their equipment. Some online and print guides list venues that no longer exist - or that merely no longer offer connectivity - and thus do not offer accurate counts.

Figures about the number of customers and their use of cafes and telecentres are even more uncertain, although there appears to be significant regional variation (eg in advanced economies more time is spent on game-playing and by tourists checking email than at venues in emerging economies).

John Stewart's small scale study of UK cybercafes commented that

They all have a regular customer base, with over 50% of customers coming in at least once a month and many more regularly. Users are very mixed, male and female, young and old, although there is a marked bias toward younger people using the cafes.

In practice the major counts of cybercafes have been provided by online and print cybercafe and tourism guides. They suggest that by late 1999 the global number of cybercafes had grown to around 4,400, with estimates that between 20,000 and 200,000 cafes were operating in 2004. The latter figure reflects claims of up to 50,000 cafes in India and 110,000 in China (most, apparently, a single PC with a slow dial-up connection).

     culture and community

For some observers the importance of cybercafes and telecottages has been community, both in bringing people together and in introducing them to ICT.

Stewart for example comments that

If the city is our home, then the cybercafe is becoming an important part of our domestic life. Cybercafes bring IT into real communities, allowing people to use and learn about them in there own way.

and more broadly that cybercafes

service and reflect the communication and information needs of people living in a global society ... they place this in a local context, providing a social space and a convenient and hospitable location for technology access: the 'human face' of the information society. The cybercafe can act as a gateway or portal between a local community, represented by individuals and formal and informal groups, and on-line communities and individuals.

More problematically he comments that cybercafes take

computers and Internet outside the mainstream paradigm of individual use and ownership. The dominant industry paradigm is for individual ownership and or use of computers, communicating in a 'virtual space' or community over a network. Use of the cybercafe undermines this, as it is based on people buying time to use the computer, not owning technology, and sharing them in a public space, not in a private space. They also favour the 'networkcentric' model of information technology development: a virtual presence on the network, though a Web page or e-mail account, is more important than a physical presence, e.g. owning a computer.

In the West that notion has been challenged by the enthusiasm with which consumers have adopted personal computers at home, wireless computers (particularly among business and undergraduate users) and - more broadly - mobile phones. The latter point is explored in Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communication, Private Talk, Public Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 2002) edited by James Katz & Mark Aakhus and the Messaging profile elsewhere on this site.

Brendan Koerner took a less rosy view in 2002, claiming that

The proliferation of cybercafes in Nigeria can be linked directly to the demand supplied by 419ers [email fraudsters], who form the establishments' core clientele. Walk into an Internet cafe in Lagos, and chances are that a good percentage of the terminals are occupied by men masquerading as Laurent Kabila's long-lost son or as a rogue official at the Central Bank of Nigeria. The wiring of Nigeria is being propelled by 419—much as America's appetite for porn helped shepherd the commercial Internet through its infancy.

It has been claimed that around 25% of cybercafes in Peru and other South American nations use machines that feature keylogging software (installed by proprietors or otherwise). By capturing keystrokes it is conceivable that someone will be able to retrieve webmail passwords, the text of email messages, travel and financial details.

     the business of cyber

The cybercafe industry in the West has changed over the past decade, reflecting the factors noted above. Three models are apparent.

Some venues emphasise basic connectivity, in particular for checking email. They are often oriented to backpackers or other tourists, typically consisting of up to twenty PCs. They often don't provide food; beverages may be on a self-service basis (eg from a dispenser). The customer base is transient.

A second model offers more extensive service, which may include CD burning, scanning and printing. The type of food and beverages on offer reflects the venue's location and demographics, ranging from snacks to full meals. Particular venues are used as 'offices away from home' rather than merely points to collect/despatch mail.

A third model emphasises game-playing, with connectivity centred on multi-player games between users (typically male and under 25) located in that venue and other venues. Such cybercafes implicitly discourage casual email and business use. Their facilities are more likely to feature machines with headphones or speakers.

The major development since 2000 has been diffusion of wireless hot-spots, allowing consumers to access the net without using someone else's machine. That is attractive to cybercafe operators because it frees them from investments in hardware and maintenance. T-Mobile, Pacific Century Cyber Works and Telstra for example provide wireless access in many Starbucks and Pacific Coffee venues in Hong Kong, the US and Australia. Telstra announced a wireless alliance with McDonalds in 2004, suggesting that its hotspots

will make checking email, surfing the web, watching streaming video and listening to the latest top 10 songs as easy as ordering a Big Mac.

The International Association of Cybercafes (IAC) claims - for us unpersuasively - that

cybercafes provide the best way to learn about the Internet because the staff of the cybercafe is available to teach and guide the public. The cybercafe also is a great way to get Internet access for home or business use because there is a physical place to go for the answers, not just a dreaded phone call for tech support. Many companies have recognized the cybercafe as the perfect means to sell their products. Customers to cybercafes get a chance to use computer software and hardware before they make a purchasing decision. By using these products before they buy, consumers have the ability to make an educated decision in the purchasing process. In many cases these products are available for purchase at the cybercafe either at the store itself or via an on-line storefront. Cybercafes offer services that are not available anywhere else because they feature advanced technologies that are either too expensive to afford or are not available in residential areas.

Virginia Heffernan, on a slow news day in November 2008, informed readers of the New York Times about

the musty business model of the Internet cafe, allowing patrons to rent time on its computers. Web2Zone was even named "Best Internet Cafe" by The New York Press, though that honor takes on a slightly different hue when you realize that the category has been facing obsolescence for more than a decade. Most recently, the rattiest old cybercafes in Queens have been shut down, following too-frequent fights among hotheaded video-game patrons. And the once-glamorous @Cafe in Manhattan was already boarded up by 1998! "The notion of a cybercafe — a place for Net surfers to socialize on a tide of gourmet coffee — is at odds with how most people want to use computers, even in their leisure time", Michel Marriott observed that year in The New York Times. "Those who Web surf, read e-mail, write or program or do just about anything else on a computer often do so in solitude." Today, with superpowered handhelds, we imagine digital life as something that no longer requires devoted surfaces, mouse pads or uninterrupted stretches of time.

     the Australian industry

The shape of the Australian industry is uncertain. In contrast to parts of Europe there have been no major chains of cybercafes. (Stelios Haji-Ioannou's chain in the UK for example encompassed over 70 outlets at its height.) Most venues appear to have been established in isolation - it is rare to find more than three venues under common ownership - and few offer more than 20 devices for accessing the net.

Low entry costs, inconsistent demand away from particular locations - notably tourist strips - and entertainment economics mean that the industry has been volatile. The life of many venues is short; the 'survivors' have emphasised food or game-playing ... or simply accepted low revenues.

A note about wireless access in Australia and New Zealand is here.

   next page (LAN cafes)