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WiFi Free-For-All
my_LART writes "Information Week reports that WiFi access is becoming a free commodity. Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT) has recently dropped its pay-per-use model and has installed free access to the WLAN in the food court and will be expanding access to the gates. On a similar note, Choice Hotels International is planning a WLAN rollout at its 370 Comfort Suites and 140 Clarion properties by the end of May. Choice Hotels International plans on expanding the rollout to two more of the company's brands by the end of the year. While this is great for us Road Warriors, how can this make financial sense? Choice Hotels can certainly markup the cost of the rooms by a few dollars per night, but how is PIT planning on reclaiming the costs? Regardless, lets hope other airports and hotel chains follow suit."
Reason? Delayed flights, if you have to hang around the gate, it helps a lot. And the fact that at the more remote gates its a lot more quiet than at the food courts.
I had to do this in Atlanta last week even with the cost associated with it. It was better than sitting around for 6 hours. (I usually walk the terminals if i'm there that long)
I did some work and then used it to play some on line games on the laptop waiting for the weather to clear and the ground delays to free up.
Nothing new, though... I can go to my local library and do the same thing through the public computers. They'd never find me... MWA-HA-HA!
Karma: Bad (mostly due to all those "In Soviet Russia" jokes)
Just this past week, as a part of my Baltimore -> San Francisco roadtrip, I stayed at a Days Inn in Farmington, New Mexico. This is a small town up in the way remote area of north-western New Mexico.
I was going to stay at the Holiday Inn there, but what made me change my mind when I rolled into town at 12am was the big banner on the side of the Days Inn which touted "Fee broadband access."
Who would pass that up? Days Inn got my business, and my PowerBook got a open WAP with a great signal in the hotel room. The Days Inn seemed to have a rather decent ADSL connection from local provider digii.net
That's right. But not the whole story-if you've been paying attention to PIT there's a lot going on.
US Air has a huge hub there, but the airline also has a strong presence in Philadelphia. Not surprisingly, the airline never seems to have enough money, despite the fact that the government paid for expansions to the airport at the request of and according to recommendations made by US Air. Maybe they could cut costs by switching to a single hub in Philly? Could be...but whether that's a good idea or not it's a great threat to extort concessions from the Pittsburgh Airport.
Meanwhile, anyone who flies through PIT will see banners everywhere celebrating "Yesterday's Airport of Tomorrow". Um, yeah...I suppose that makes it the airport of today...they put up plaques explaining the glorious and futuristic history of the airport, and how traveller friendly it is. Citizens of the Twenty First Century, fly PIT, fly the Future!
Both of these factors are major motivations for free wireless. Travellers will be more likely to spend time in the airport, they bolster their high tech futuristic image, US Air gets free access for its employees (working ones can really use it, ones on breaks really love it) and the airport gets to justify those Airport Improvement Fees and tell taxpayers how they're being innovative and luring business. (They just love justifying higher fees in a city where there's such a serious budget problem some politicians have actually suggested eliminating bus service on Sundays, the bastard whores)
Free wireless internet has something to offer for all parties involved, and the days of pay-as-you-go wireless are numbered everywhere. Once the free stuff becomes more affordable to provide and more common, users will come to expect it. They'll simply refuse to pay fees for wireless, and organizations that keep trying to charge will be considered greedy and outdated. PIT certainly doesn't want that, they want to be the leaders into the glorious pro-consumer (and pro-business at the same time!) future.
Does anyone think it's really going to be that many years before hotels that currently provide broadband for $10/night give it away for free? The up front installation may be expensive, but once it's paid for itself the service is really cheap.
Getting off topic, has anybody ever flown with a pocket flashlight that has the batteries side by side, rather than in a long column? Those things really seem to piss of security screeners. Every time I leave one in my pocket or bag, they pull me aside and rape me or something. Anybody have any idea why? Does it look like a secret micro gun a spy might carry? Do bomb manufacturers always put their batteries side by side? Or is it just an excuse and I'm too cute, cuddly, and rapable for security people to resist?
I grew up in Pittsburgh and the airport was designed as an "Airmall" where people waiting for flights or waiting to pick people up would shop and eat. Unlike many airports, the prices are no more than they would be on Main Street. However, all of the shops are on the secure side of the security controls, and so when after 9/11 they changed the rules so that only ticketed passengers could go through security, the shops and restaurants lost half of their customers. Part of the motivation must be, I guess, to help out the restaurants by hoping that passengers will linger for a coffee or a Big Mac while they check their mail before they go to their gates.
Don't think that you are completely secure and private when operating from such an access point anyway. You still have a MAC address. If you want to believe that Tom Ridge and John Ashcroft don't have a database with your MAC address in it, that's your business, but more than one computer user has learned the hard way that the MAC address identifies them.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Within the last month, the our local airport has had WI-FI Installed throughout the building here in Moline, Illinois (www.qcairport.com). I doubt its addition will raise any fees for anyone. Mediacom, our local cable company/Hi-speed cable provider, has big signs posted around saying "Free WI-FI Provided by Mediacom Online" so, one can assume that the airport may actually be making money or at least getting it for free by providing advertising space for Mediacom and Mediacom providing free internet access.
www.insanelygood.com
DocChaos -------- I may be crazy, but then again I may be crazy.
This may have been said already, but I think the WiFi is already at the gates. On a recent layover in Pittsburgh, I pulled out my PowerBook while waiting for my flight to Toronto... low and behold, there was access. This was in a US Airways terminal.
Just though I'd say so.
bash-3.00$ uname -a
SunOS panda 5.10 Generic sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-2
it looks like a two-shot primitive gun. not terribly uncommon. they're usually packed to look like a keychain or wine bottle opener. two AA or AAA battery "slots", especially in a metal casing, make for a decent, close range gun. i'd just buy a mini-maglite and be done with it.
moox. for a new generation.
Showing ID?! Cameras? Eyeshot? Bah.
These are WIFI networks we're talking about! Sit in your car across the street, out of ID and camera range.
I'll give you an example: Go to any one of several hotels in the San Fran area that give guests WIFI access. The free ones, I mean. And there are several. There's one near SFO that comes to mind. The parking lot is well within WIFI range. The SSID is well-known (you can socially engineer it from the desk once and it rarely changes). Bingo.
Jed Blue gives free wifi access in certain airports, specificity JFK and I think Long Beach.
It also makes sense because providing the internet feed is dirt cheap, while trying to meter it and collect fees is NOT.
Tangentially related thought... If I stay at a hotel costing over $150/night, local calls from the room cost $1.50 each, and high speed internet access costs $10-15 per day. If I stay at a motel costing $45/night, local calls and internet are free. It's not so much the cost of providing the service, but what people, particularly those on expense accounts, are willing to pay.
The future of pay wi-fi providers such as T-Mobile seems limited.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
CMH has had WiFi access throughout the airport for some time now. I happened to be coming home around Christmas time and saw a random sign while waiting for my luggage about WiFi being available.
I went down to an empty corner of the baggage claim area to wait for my ride to show up, and sure enough there was what appeared to be unhindered (no port blocking, etc) WiFi access. And I never really considered CMH to be one of the "leading edge" airports in the country.
There is very little future in being right when your boss is wrong.