Getting a signal

This evening we walked down a road for 15 minutes to one of the predlets pre-school, for a parents evening.
Just out of interest I sparked up the n95 to hunt for wireless networks whilst walking. I was expecting 1 or two but there were about 20. They were (apart from 1 secure) a mixture of netgear, belkin, sky and bt hubs.
Firstly, this was surprising that ther were this many, secondly we were walking a fair way from the front of the houses all set back in their gardens.
It is a pity that we can all use the networks in a open way, but still it seems that wireless is really catching on even in a sleepy coastal village.