Erik Porter's Blog

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    Free Wi-Fi

    I'm blogging from the Fort Wayne International Airport in Indiana.  I was very surprised to find that the wireless internet was free here.  I don't really fly that often, but all the airports I've been to halfway recently haven't had free internet.  It's usually pretty cheap, like 6 or 7 dollars, but still something.  I'm impressed with businesses that give out free internet access.  I'm not a coffee drinker, but if I was, I would rather hang out at a Panera Bread than Starbucks, because Starbucks charges for their internet (unless you're a T-Mobile customer) and Panera is free.  In my opinion, it just makes good business sense to have free internet.  Especially now while not everyone has it.

    On a related note, when are wireless routers going to come with a way to allow me to let anonymous users into my wireless pipe, but with say an extremely limited connection out and no access to my local network?  I think if everyone started having the attitude of the internet being everywhere and open (at least a little), it would get easier and easier to get online.  Kind of a you scratch my back, I scratch yours sort of thing.  Anyway...time to fly back to Sea-Town...later...

    Update: George put up a cool link to do the sort of thing I talked about in this entry.  Check it out!

    Posted: Dec 30 2005, 07:08 AM by HumanCompiler | with 12 comment(s)
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    Comments

    Nish said:

    What's Sea-Town? Or rather, where's Sea-Town?
    # December 30, 2005 2:08 PM

    Nish said:

    Oh, and free wifi access wherever you go, sounds a nice proposition too :-)
    # December 30, 2005 2:08 PM

    Erik Porter said:

    Sorry, Sea-Town = Seattle...I have a friend that calls it that...
    # December 30, 2005 11:31 PM

    Jerry Dennany said:

    Free Wireless internet doesn't make sense for a lot of businesses, especially those that depend on customer traffic rates to generate revenue. All low-scale food or coffee joints need to serve as many customers per hour as possible, and someone sucking up a valuable seat surfing the internet for several hours isn't really a good thing.

    Many businesses have found that wireless internet adds nothing to the bottom line.

    # January 1, 2006 1:09 PM

    George Gombos said:

    Look at www.wibiki.com for a way of sharing your wireless connection :)
    # January 4, 2006 5:24 AM

    Erik Porter said:

    Jerry, that's a good point about needing to push people through, but sometimes a well run business is about more than that. Getting a customer to come to your shop once is one thing. Getting a customer to come to your shop over and over is much better. Right now, there still aren't too many business that give out free wi-fi, so it could be an advantage that a smaller place could have over a bigger place. Also, some things that don't make business sense today, will tomorrow. ;) Quite honestly, my statement about free wi-fi is something I don't see lasting. I'm no fortune teller, but I would venture to guess that down the road this whole blog entry won't even apply to businesses.

    George, that looks excellent. I'm going to give it a try soon and I added an update to this entry, thanks!
    # January 4, 2006 12:28 PM

    Eric said:

    I'm a T-Mobile phone customer, and I think I still have to subscribe to some other service to get "Free" internet at Starbucks.
    # January 5, 2006 9:45 AM

    Erik Porter said:

    Wow, lame, Eric!
    # January 5, 2006 12:43 PM

    moom said:

    I was in Starbucks in downtown Burlington VT and seemed to get on the T-Mobile thing for free...
    # January 11, 2006 3:38 PM

    moonsammy said:

    Wibiki is exactly what your looking for. share your access with security turned on. its free as well.
    # January 12, 2006 2:22 PM

    b-ray said:

    looks cool, but only for pc and linksys routers
    # January 12, 2006 4:02 PM

    moonsammy said:

    looks like they have Mac support to me.
    # January 12, 2006 6:21 PM