August 6th, 2008 : Free WiFi
If there is one thing I hate when traveling it is trying to find access to the Internet. It seems that no one offers free Internet for customers or visiters, but will gladly charge you hansomely for a few hours of access.
Recently, on a family vacation to the North Shore of Lake Superior, my domain name expired. I knew it was going to expire soon, but I thought I still had a few weeks because I had been ignoring the spam like emails that MyDomain was sending out every few days for the last two months. (Side note, I don’t see the point of renewing a domain name 60 days ahead of schedule, so stop bloody bugging me about it!)
Anyway, two days after my domain name expired I was in the town of Grand Marais, MN. Most of the town us covered by a BorealWireless service. (Which supplies wireless to most of the city, several busineses, and even their library.) Fortunately for me I found an open network called “NETGEAR” and was able to check my email on my iPod Touch. Even more fortunately, I actually read my email from MyDomains which told me I had an expired Domain. (Side note: I don’t trust them to hold onto my credit card info so the auto renew failed.) I was unable to renew my domain via my iPod, but I was able to call and renew my domain for another year.
Okay, so where am I going with this? This incident got me thinking. I don’t want to pay for an hours worth of time so I can spend 30 seconds checking my email to see if there is an emergency. What I would like to see happen can be described in two senarios:
(Mediocre solution) WiFi providers offer a 5 or 10 minute wireless plan for a small fee. Just enough time so you can check in on things. Then, if the need were to arise, the user could buy a longer block of time.
(Better solution) WiFi providers offer a limited 2 or 5 minute free period wherein the user may check in on things and decide if the need to purchase more online time.
Here is a novel idea, rather than charging people an exorbitant fee for a pathetic service, give customers something they are willing to pay for.