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FCC Nixes Airport's Ban On Private Net Access
Several readers wrote to let us know about a ruling by the US Federal Communications Commission forbidding Boston's Logan Airport from shutting down airline-supplied Internet access services that compete with the airport's own, for-pay wireless coverage. From the article: "A two-year effort by Logan International Airport officials to shut down private alternatives to the airport's $8-a-day wireless Internet service was decisively rejected yesterday by federal regulators, who blasted airport officials for raising bogus legal and technological arguments."
I can't believe it.. the FCC did the right thing for once.. I... I am out of words.. lets hope this moment of competency continues.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
Here is a nice lil list I found a while ago of US airports with free wifi, enjoy.
http://www.wififreespot.com/airport.html
You are all a bunch of idots.
Clearly the Airport officials were not paying the right people enough lobbying money. I mean the FCC is perfectly willing to accept bogous legal and technical arguments for deregulation of the airwaves. And it has been happy to digest bogous arguments against community wireless. Ditto the bogous arguments for the Broadcast flag. One can only assume that Logan Airport's lobbying budget is too small or has been misspent.
The FCC was involved because Massport had complained to the FCC that the WiFi service would interfere with other radios... the FCC rightly said this was shenanigans.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
The airlines lease physical space, in all probability their leases make no mention of wireless conditionals, the FCC controls the spectrum and is the arbitor when spectrum usage is in question.
A few years back there was a newspaper article about (my) local airport: St Louis International--and how the pay phones were vanishing. With the arrival of cheap cellphones, the once-numerous pay phones were going mostly unused. Over a period of two years, they had removed almost 95% of the phones, and had plans to keep removing phones, because the revenues they were seeing were not covering the lease costs.
The airport management said that this wouldn't be a problem except that it was the revenue from the pay phones that used to pay for internal maintenance--that is, the phones paid the janitors. Most (US) airports were managed this way, and they didn't have anything else to shift funding from to allow for this loss. All the other fee structures they charged were to other companies, that were only for use related to what those companies did. The terms of these charges are set in contracts that cannot usually be easily, or immediately, changed.
Charging for 802.x was assumed to be the next internal maintenance income stream--but now, we see that it is not so.
....So then,,, (looking around),,, what else can they charge travelers for?....
~
And the issue of whether a property owner can dictate that you must use their WiFi system is not the slam-dunk you think it is. If you rent an apartment, your landlord has certain rights on how you can use it (e.g. you can't run a restaurant in it) but can't tell you you have to buy mobile phones from him. To use your Starbucks example, you can't go into Starbucks and order a pizza from Dominos, but Starbucks also cannot tell you you can only read magazines purchased from them.
What was once true, is no longer so
Haven't these guys learned anything since 9/11? If they'd only raised bogus security arguments, they would've sailed through. Heck, the feds probably would've authorized them to shoot anybody with a BlackBerry.
As someone who has lived in "the cradle of liberty" for quite some time, it wouldn't surprise me if they started jamming.
The airlines can jam just as effectively, but my guess is that the airlines generally have much more pull than any individual airport. As far as I know, the airlines are the customers and rent gates at the airports, so conflict between them will probably just go in favor of the airlines.
Unfortunately, the airlines will probably just start charging for wireless internet like they charge for airplane food. They just want to undercut the airports first.
A landlord could include almost any provision they want in the lease, as long as it wasn't, for instance, something illegal like selling yourself into slavery. But from my limited understanding of the law, it seems that if the landlord put "No Free Wireless" in the lease, then "No Free Wireless" it would be. But it sounds like they didn't do that, tried some legal shenanigans, and got shot down. They could attempt to negotiate it into any new lease, but then they are just bargaining, and not from a very strong position. Thus the attempt to get the government on their side.
As far as I know, Starbucks, like every other business, retains the right to refuse business for any reason, including bringing unapproved magazines onto their premesis. What they can't do is (for instance) require you to sell your firstborn child into slavery or make you vote for a certain party. There are certain rights you can't actually sign away, but I don't think the right to free wireless or outside magazines is included.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton