I’ve been doing a lot of traveling over the past year. Thus I am intimately familiar with the need to access e-mail and the net on the move. From airports, to hotel lobbbies, to coffee shops, to park benches, to convention spaces, whether or not I’m able to find a network and get online tells me things abut the paces I go.
London - shameful that a hotel (near Buckingham Palace) charges 19.95 GBP for one day of connectivity - that’s a bit less than $40 to us here in North America. Shocking.
Munich - business hotel, again a charge. This time, 14.95 Euros for 24 hours. Roughly $27 per day, when I was there a few weeks back. No thanks, I’ll wait until I hit the office.
Las Vegas - at the convention center - this one is baffling. I’m sitting next to a guy who sees different networks than I do. The cheapest network I’m seeing is $99.95 USD PER DAY. Obviously targeting businesses showing at the conference, but what’s left for the rest of us? Well, it’s free actually - for 30 minutes each 24 hour period. After that, it’s $12.95 per day. *sigh*
Why must everyone try to make a buck of the person who’s trying to make a living? I mean I get needing limits, but isn’t there a better solution than limit the general conference attendee to 30 minutes of wifi perday onsite, so we can charge $100 to a business who needs it?
Boston - I found a common, free, public wifi network while sitting on the waterfront. It allowed me to enjoy the sunny day, sit out side and still get some work done.
Seattle / Redmond - tough to go anywhere there and NOT find access to the Internet.
New York - go to a conference like SES and there’s access galore. Funny thing is it’s free at the conference area, but back in your room you need to pay for it. My guess is the cost to the conference organizer goes up, as I’m sure most folks just wait until morning and go to the confernece space to get online, rather than pay for connectivity in their rooms.
So, my original thoughts was that this spotty access to Internet helps shape my perception of a city/region. I mean, it’s 2008 (almost 2009). Digital cable is THE standard in about 4 months, with analog TV going the way of the dodo. Yet still, everyone broadcasting a signal wants to attach a dollar figure to it. In today’s age of super cheap bandwidth, what’s going on here?
My plan - I simply move on and look elsewhere. If your business wants to charge me or limit my access, then I vote with my feet and dollars and skip doing business with you. Hope that daily fee is paying off, because it’s costing you customers.
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