Bigbro's foray into the scary world of blogging
Why can't it be free? It used to be free? Why is it not free any more? wah wah wah!
I don't travel as much as I should, but still find myself killing time in airports. I generally have at least one laptop with me so the ability to connect to the internet wirelessly and send a few packets back and forth would be quite useful.
Many of the airlines are using wireless networks for their own data traffic, so I can't see why it would be a problem to borrow some kind of shared medium concept from fixed networks. VPN technology has reached the point whereby it's practical to use for any and all purposes where security in an untrusted network, so why not VPN all the checkin desk traffic and allow open connectivity for us, the punters who want to send a brief e-mail, poke someone on IRC to see if they've remembered to go to the airport at the other end or browse helpful information regarding facilities at the airport.
Speaking of facilities at the airport, why not advertise alongside any web traffic browsed? While it's not a trivial task, it's not difficult to put various advertising technologies in with port 80 data... and I'd be quite prepared to put up with it if I had a free WLAN connection. If the adverts were to inform me that just upstairs from the departure lounge is a bar serving happy hour drinks, or that the duty free shop was selling electrical good at half price today, I may well be inspired to get out of my seat and give them some of my money.
There's definitely some kind of intelligent way to provide a really good service that provides a win-win situation for airport services and clients.
posted at: 10:15 | path: /rants | permanent link to this entry
