Whyizzit so many other airports offer free wi-fi service and O’Hare insists on selling it? The question isn’t so much why O’Hare does ($$$), but why do (most?) others choose to accommodate travelers? Personally, I think it makes Chicago/O’Hare look bad/cheap.
Because that’s The Chicago Way ™. Because someone who’s politically-connected has the contract to provide the service, and there’s nothing preventing them from charging.
Last time I was there, I had an office emergency and paid for the service – which wouldn’t work on my MacBook, to the bafflement of their tech support. Boingo sucks sweaty donkey balls!
Also, notice how the cheapest chain motels in the strip malls have free WiFi, but the pricy hotels in the downtown charge through the nose?
My impression of the situation is that the major airports tend to have pay wireless only, while the smaller airports tend to have free access. This may be a historical accident — the major airports got their wireless networks first, before the “wireless wants to be free” mentality took over. Now, of course, everyone wants free wireless — but the pay providers at the big airports have signed contracts to provide pay service, and they’re not really looking to have the airport authority repossess that cash cow, thank you very much.
I fly to Chicago several times a year and find this very annoying because when I’m heading home I usually get to O’Hare ridiculously early for my flight, due to the uncertainty of how long it’s going to take me to get there and how long it’s going to take me to get through security. So I end up having and hour or two to kill before my flight, and it would be nice to be able to spend some of that time checking my mail and doing other online activities, but I’m damned if I’m going to pay for it.
How many airports have free WiFi? In my experience, very few do. The last one I remember being through that have free WiFi is Phoenix. I believe it’s becoming more and more common, but it’s still not to be expected in my experience.
Here’s a free Airport Wi-Fi map I found. Don’t know how up-to-date it is, but lots of airports are off that list.
Boingo is pretty much standard at most airports. A few tips, though, to avoid it:
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If there’s a Starbucks at the airport, go there or near it. Starbucks has free wifi.
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Look for an unprotected wimax. My wife and I were connected to an unprotected wifi network at Midway recently, and after a while we figured out it must have been someone’s wimax thingy! Why? Because the connection suddenly died when a flight was boarding. heh.
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My wife and I were in Austin for a few days. The Austin airport is yet another Boingo airport…but after we landed there, my wife went to the bathroom, and I did a scan on wireless access…and an unprotected Linksys nextwork showed up. Right there at the gate. How in the heck did that happen!? Heh…last year a hacker (the REAL kind, not what the mass media think a hacker is) told me, “We have a saying: ‘There’s always a Linksys.’” One thing I used to love doing was connecting to unprotected Linksys networks with my iPhone and rename the SSIDs to something silly. Then I got security-conscious and starting renaming unprotected Linksys networks to “FREE WIFI FOR EVERYBODY!” Last time I did that, the owner of the router got wise, put a password on it, and re-renamed it, “NOT FREE ANYMORE!”
I believe this is because cheap hotel rooms are more likely to be rented by the people who are in the rooms, and expensive rooms are more likely to be rented by businesses for their travelers. Those business travelers can charge their employers for the wi-fi costs, so they don’t care about it.
One of the most common honeypot methods known to man and easily one of the easiest ways to get your files on your HDD compromised.
ETA: Not to mention likely unauthorized access of a computer network, which would be a felony here in CA. Be weary when using someone else’s network without their consent.
Most people in airports are weary. I think they should be wary, too.
Why did AT&T start capping DSL and U-Verse, because they can.
Seriously, this is how businesses work. I recall when I worked for Starwood, we had a huge meeting about whether to put coffee, which was free in the minibars. I am talking about the pack of coffee you make with the coffee maker in your room. We found at Sheraton and Westin the people refused to buy it. But at W-Hotels and on the Luxury Hotels people bought it all the time.
It was the richer people expected it so they bought it.
We would have meetings and brainstorm about what people WILL put up with. Another for instance, is I started charging for taking packages in the business center. Even though FedEx had an office across the street and UPS had a pick up around the corner.
We charged $2 to $5 handling fee for each package. And you know what we did with them. Just kept it behind the desk each day till the UPS or FedEx guy picked it up.
But 99% of the people paid our handling fee.
I think with the AT&T cap you are going to find the days of free uncomplicated fees are going to be long over. There’s not enough competition to keep it open. And AT&T and Comcast (among others) have a vested interested in seeing you pay more for using it more, rather than upgrade their lines. Soon the Internet, like Cable and Cell Phones will be nothing but a vast wasteland of tiered services for which you’ll over pay.
Remember how dial up was? It was pay for each minute, till enough competition entered the scene to drive that out.
I was pretty pissed off when I found out that AT&T was implementing data usage limits…until I checked my account and found that the most bandwidth my wife and I have used was 26 gigabytes in a month. Not QUITE the 150-gigabyte limit, which you have to break THREE times before they actual penalize you…I thought for sure we use at least half that…
This has been my experience as well. O’Hare, LaGuardia, JFK, Dulles; they all charge. But little airports like Harrisburg, Richmond (off the top of my head) offer it for nothing.
Personally, I use my Android phone and “tether” it to my laptop to get free internet access. “Free” in the sense that I only use my cell phone data plan, and don’t have to pay the airport.
The stand-alone internet kiosks in O’Hareport are kinda bizarre too. I’ve not seen those same units anywhere else, although I haven’t travelled that extensively between US airports. They look like something I imagine I’d see in a submarine.
Port Columbus is another airport with free wifi. Once when I was at Hopkins I was able to pick up an AT&T wifi network, which was free for me because I’m already an AT&T customer. 
If you’re in O’Hare, go to Terminal 2, where the Sprint kiosk is. Grab one of the Android phones like the EVO 4G and turn on the Sprint Wireless hotspot. Connect to it (using the password shown on the phone) and surf for free!
Well, (to nobody’s surprise), I guess this answers my original question:
http://www.suntimes.com/5754016-417/former-mayor-daleys-son-profited-after-airport-wi-fi-deal.html
I don’t remember his exact words but the elder Mayor, Richard J., was once asked about why one of his sons was making money selling insurance to city departments, or organizations somehow beholden to the Mayor. The Mayor said something like “Of course I help my son, that’s what fathers are supposed to do” and the majority of citizens of the city at the time had no real beef with that. I don’t know if that attitude has flipped over the years, but I would guess many people still think that this is ‘honest graft’ and is not the end of the world.