{"id":137,"date":"2006-01-03T11:26:59","date_gmt":"2006-01-03T16:26:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/index.php\/2006\/01\/03\/wi-fi-shouldnt-be-a-toll-road\/"},"modified":"2006-01-03T11:26:59","modified_gmt":"2006-01-03T16:26:59","slug":"wi-fi-shouldnt-be-a-toll-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2006\/01\/03\/wi-fi-shouldnt-be-a-toll-road\/","title":{"rendered":"Wi-Fi shouldn’t be a toll road"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t fly to Boston much, but I’m still interested in the fight going on<\/a> between Logan airport and Continental Airlines over public Wi-Fi. The airport — which is run by the Massachusetts Port Authority<\/a> — shut down Continental’s wireless network last fall, and the airline has asked Congress to intervene.<\/p>\n

Massport says it wants to avoid interference from a bunch of competing wireless signals, but the airlines (including American Airlines<\/a>) argue that what it really wants is a monopoly on Wi-Fi, for which it charges $8 an hour. I’m with Fred Wilson (and others) on this: Wi-Fi should be a form of public infrastructure, like roads or bridges<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I also like an analogy I first saw in a Wired article<\/a> by Paul Boutin: Wi-Fi is a condiment, like sugar or cream, or salt and pepper. Providing it is a service that you hope will make people want to come back to your establishment. Hardly anyone charges for the use of their washrooms either — not even airports.<\/p>\n

There’s more discussion at WSJ writer Jeremy Wagstaff’s blog<\/a> and at WiFi Networking News<\/a>. Dana Blankenhorn at ZDNet has also posted on it<\/a>, as has my friend Rob Hyndman<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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I don’t fly to Boston much, but I’m still interested in the fight going on between Logan airport and Continental Airlines over public Wi-Fi. The airport — which is run by the Massachusetts Port Authority — shut down Continental’s wireless network last fall, and the airline has asked Congress to intervene. Massport says it wants … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Wi-Fi shouldn’t be a toll road”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":false,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}