* Wi-Fi, Ethernet services vary from venue to venue
I’m at Newark International Airport being prompted for the fourth or fifth time this week to sign up for a Wi-Fi hots pot service costing between $7.95 and $9.95. It will last until I move on to the next airport, hotel room or cafe, where a different provider will offer its services for still another fee.
I’m at Newark International Airport being prompted for the fourth or fifth time this week to sign up for a Wi-Fi hot spot service costing between $7.95 and $9.95. It will last until I move on to the next airport, hotel room or cafe, where a different provider will offer its services for still another fee.
Mobility needs to get easier.
My first stop this trip was in a North Carolina Marriott, where I settled into a room that offered only an ancient dial-up Internet connection (which I discovered once already unpacked and in my PJs). Even if I thought I could tolerate working with dial-up, the point is moot, because there is no internal modem-with-phone jack on my Macbook.
From there, I schlepped my belongings across the hall to a room with wired Ethernet service. It worked whenever it felt like it. I was also charged $9.95 every few hours instead of once a day, an administrative quirk I had to remedy upon checkout.
So I tried the “free” wireless LAN in the lobby. I had no trouble connecting to the WLAN. But the WLAN couldn’t seem to connect to the Internet.
So, with a sigh, I moved on to the next segment of my travels in New Jersey.
From there, I visited a client, who had promised WLAN access and a temporary cubicle. But when I got to the guest WLAN portal, I needed a username and password that no one seemed to know how to get. My client looked into it and discovered that it would take “several weeks” for IT to set me up in a guest user database.
More on guest access next time. But, generally, mobility needs to be simpler for those of us who don’t have the plutonium-flyer status that buys free access to airline clubs or can justify paying a flat monthly fee for “everywhere” Wi-Fi access. Those of us who hit the road a handful of times a year are the forgotten middle class when it comes to mobility.
