At TechSearch, Rick DeMeis picks up on a story in Sunday's Boston Globe about the battle between wireless cafe owners and squatters, those who take over a table in the cafe to use the free wireless without buying anything to eat or drink.

Some cafe owners, DeMeis says, are shutting down their Wi-Fi access during the morning rush, but that risks annoying legit users.

"However, all this may be moot in the not too distant future as more municipalities install city- and town-wide wireless services for their citizens," DeMeis writes. "Then eateries can revert to being places of socialization and connecting on a personal, rather than an electronic, level."

Still, the Boston Globe article quotes some cafe owners who seem to be hoping that people won't use the Wi-Fi for more than a few minutes at a time. "There comes a time when you have to tell people, 'Look, you've been here for three hours, and you've bought only a cup of coffee and it's time to move,'" says Adam Goldberg, owner of Emack & Bolio's.

Like anything else, it's a matter of balancing customer service with the bottom line -- but writing as someone who's used Wi-Fi for three hours on one cup of coffee many times, I'd argue that that should be fine, particularly during downtimes when tables are empty... still, as DeMeis notes, this isn't likely to be an issue for much longer.