The old adage “You Get What You Pay For” is really true when it comes to Free versus Paid for WiFi access.
Today, in the San Jose Business Journal a story broke how the airport there is going to try a combination of both free and paid WiFi service. That’s like one foot in, one foot out. You the hoky poky and let someone else figure it out.
As someone who has been on paid WiFi at hotspots since the concept came to be, I love the idea of knowing what I’m getting. With free you just never know and what can you complain about? There wasn’t any consideration.
While this move is a halfway move by the San Jose Airport folks, I will still be using my roaming services from Boingo and my T-Mobile access. You see with both of those services the airports and I both know what we’re getting.
I’m in the large camp that hates airport paid wifi, even if we might use paid wifi in other locations like Starbucks.
The reason? Usually I want my airport wifi for a short, and often unpredictable time — until they call my flight. I want to sync up email that I’ll deal with on the plane.
But, unless you buy a monthly account, most of the airport wifi services I encounter charge a fairly large daily or hourly fee, which I’m not interested in for 10-15 minutes of usage.
In Starbucks, I’m usually going there to use the wifi if I’m using it at all. I don’t mind paying for an hour because I plan to use most of an hour.
I’m sure they providers know this. And they know you don’t have a choice, so if you really need it you’ll pay it, even resenting how the money must go through your nose.
And they probably make more money that way, losing me as a customer but getting an hour’s charge for 10 minutes from somebody who has no choice.
It’s rarely a good deal or good service anywhere there’s a monopoly. I would be happy to see more paid wifi in areas where there was competition.