Forbes somehow came up with a methodology to measure and rank airport WiFi. Unfortunately, my first hand experience in San Diego, Phoenix, Las Vegas and elsewhere, where the WiFi is free has demonstrated that Free is rarely as good as paid.
I caught up with Boingo CEO David Hagan who had some pointed and very relevant commentary:
"In our experience, you get what you pay for. Free networks in high usage locations like airports are a quality death spiral. As more consumers access the network, the quality goes down. It becomes uneconomic to add more bandwidth because no one is paying for it. Advertising doesn't come close to covering the cost so the end result is a poor user experience or a very expensive amenity for the airport to pay for that benefits a relatively small number of airport customers."
He's right. Why should public venues put more money into supporting free? They can't. Economically free WiFi doesn't work.
What about providing free WiFi as part of excellent customer service? I already paid for the ticket, part of that money goes to the airport, can't I expect the airport to provide free, high quality WiFi as part of customer experience. After all, I'm spending countless hours doing nothing there, might as well do something useful.
Posted by: Slawomir Fryska | March 08, 2008 at 05:38 AM