Airport WiFi - Making Travel LESS Enjoyable

I’m blogging from 30,000 feet today [really this was 4-10-08]. My trip today reminds me of the inconvenience of traveling. Luckily I don’t travel all that often. Lines . . . everywhere. And if your lucky enough to have SSS on your ticket you get a free feel up by some TSA guy going through security. After the complimentary violation you’re welcomed to the terminal where you get overpriced garbage attempting to mascarade as food. Be prepared to open your wallet should you want a drink to take the edge off. WHY? Because they can.

As if all this insult wasn’t enough, I took out my iPhone from its protective confines of my bag, someone has to protect it from TSA violation, to happily find an AT&T Wi-Fi network. I fired up Safari and was taken to a AT&T launch page. I was amazed to find that they wanted me to purchase a pass to use their service. It’s bad enough that I’m traveling, but to not be able to sit at the terminal, where I’ll be for hours to make sure that I didn’t miss my flight (the LINES again), and get some free wi-fi is unacceptable. I didn’t stick around long enough to see how much AT&T wanted to scam me out of, but $1.00 would have been too much.

The worst part about the airport hotspot situation is there is no standard. I was joking before when I said $1.00 would be too much. But can you imagine spending $9.99 for a day pass, have a connecting flight at another airport, and arrive to find out that it’s a T-mobile hotspot. You’ve already paid for AT&T and now you’re going to get dinged by T-mobile in the same day. I’m surprised there isn’t more fuss coming from travelers about this. There should be a standard at airports in the US and I propose it should be free to consumers.

I should have to agree to the terms of service indicating that I won’t use the network for no good, or for porn . . . come on, kids could be around. It should be an add supported network, someone has to pay. I have no problem being presented with advertising for the newest Bose noise canceling headphones, the crap burger at the scam factory down the terminal, or even the SkyRest Travel Pillow (the most ridiculous product I was able to find from sky mall).

As I started this I said that I connected to the AT&T hotspot from my Apple iPhone. HELLO it’s already running on the AT&T network. Is there no way for the network to realize this and allow me to connect for free?? Is AT&T trying to tell me that the good money I spend every month for their service isn’t enough to consume some Wi-Fi before my flight?!? I suppose they’d rather me consume data on their cellular network which has to be more costly . . . so I did.

In our DigitalLifestyle we demand constant broadband connectivity. Every device talks to the internet and for Airports to be starving us of this connectivity after they fashion airports to be the most inconvenient places, they should be ashamed of themselves.