Because there’s always going to be some guy who says “Hey buddy - wanna buy a nice watch?” and no one but the potential buyer will be available to:
Actually, at Oakland Coliseum there is only one vendor: Aramark.
O’Hare has data reception for at least 3 cell phone providers. I doubt the monopoly argument would work. Someone could argue that you should just get a cellular modem. I dont even bother with wifi. I just use my phone. If I traveled more Id buy a tethering plan. The last time I paid for wifi was on an ATA flight. Now thats a captive audience!
Yep, wifi isnt the solution for all our wireless needs. Wireless-B/G only has three non-overlapping channels. So if you had 5 vendors then it would quickly become useless as everyone crowded those channels. I guess N is a little better with 5ghz support, but because the FCC allocates so little spectrum to the ISM band, its really a natural monopoly of sorts. Perhaps the FCC should be giving us more meaty bandwidth in the ISM instead of selling it to google or whomever.
Not sure what the solution here is. The airports could easily just have ethernet ports in various areas to accommodate more vendors. Sharing switches is easier than sharing radio. I doubt they want to. Airport pricing is like theme park pricing. Its set to what the market can bear. Until someone passes a law or a court ruling mandates it, I doubt internet access will be seen as vital or as a human right.
Also, if you travel a lot you can pay for Boingo wireless, which is 10 dollars a month. They have deals with all sorts of airports. Thats cheaper than a tethering plan.
Looks like they service both midway and ohare.
http://boingo.jiwire.com/search-wifi-hotspots.htm?city_id=35392&location_type_id=1&provider_id=173
PDX (Portland, OR) has free wi-fi. There’s also a law in Portland that the airport shops/cafes can’t charge more than would be expected for the same item in the city, in other words, the airport Wendy’s charges the same as the Wendy’s in the mall.
It’s strange, because I don’t normally find myself on this side of the argument when the subject is the freedom of the market…
Who gets to be arbiter of what is fair and proper though? I appreciate that in the case of airports, the market is already being somewhat forced, but if that were not so (in the case of the privately-owned mall) - who gets to decide that the owners of the venue made a decision that needs overriding?
How do we evaluate whether their decision to permit only one pizza restaurant is justified in some way? If we decide it’s not, how do we remedy it?
IMO, market interference is most necessary when people are suffering some hardship as a result of market failure. I don’t think it works so well when its objective is just to satisfy our desire to see preferred choices on the menu.
The provision of choices is just a tendency of competitive markets, not a guarantee - and I think in most cases, forcing it to do one thing will make it fail to perform in some other way.
How long have they been in charge? I was last there quite a while ago (1994?).
To me fair and proper is choice, as in store A and store B, not store A or nothing.
Sure, choice is nice, but it isn’t always naturally available - and forcing it to happen may have undesired effects in other ways - in our hypothetical mall example, imposing upon the mall owner the requirement to offer a choice of pizza restaurants may mean he cannot attract such valuable tenders from competing chains - so his profit dips and (worst case) the mall goes out of business or has to cut back on cleaning the toilets, or some such.
This is how it is in Pittsburgh as well, free wifi and pricing parity.
I’m curious what would happen if a vendor in an airport with paid wifi decided to install their own network and offer it to customers for free, since we know that wifi doesn’t stay within walls very well. For instance, TGI Fridays is rolling out wifi nationwide, and they have some airport based locations. I wonder if there could be repercussions against them if they said “we’re going to go ahead and put wifi in with our provider at our airport restaurants too.”