Public service annoucement:
There is no such thing as free wi-fi.
What’s that I hear you say? How can I possibly say such a thing? How could I tell such an untruth? You could give me a dozen examples of exactly how wrong I am?
Sorry – I repeat myself in the face of all your examples: There is. No. Such. Thing. As. Free. Wifi.
At least not legally. At least not in the sense that you seem to mean it…or think it…
Allow me to explain what I mean by this:
Anywhere you go that offers a wifi signal with the possible exception of the very rare “city-wide” wifi signal, which is an elusive beast rather akin to a unicorn and I am tempted to say does not truly exist in any reliable form, and libraries (for which you still have to at least sign up for a library account in most cases) – there is a cost attached somewhere. Or at least there is supposed to be.
Y’see, most businesses offer wifi as part of their service. You buy a coffee at your local coffee shop, you get to hook into their wifi signal. You order lunch at the Hard Rock Café – they’ll give you their wifi password. Hint: that’s why those passwords exist. You check in at a hotel, the privilege of using their wifi signal is part of the price of the room. You still paid for the room correct? What I mean by this is that whether you see the cost or not, you are still paying for this service. No, your hotel doesn’t offer ‘free wifi” it offers wifi with the cost of the room, same with your local coffee shop, your grocery store etc etc – you’re supposed to pay for using their service by making a purchase at their business.
So yeah, that includes places like starbucks and all those fast food outlets . All those people you see camping outside of Mc’Ds on their phones? Guess what, technically speaking, they’re stealing. Because you are supposed to go in and buy a burger to use that signal.
For the record also: no airline doesn’t charge for wifi, they may have a special option to not charge for internet messaging, but that’s not the same as full wifi, and again the cost of that has been bundled into the price of your flight. You may not see it, but that’s how it works.
This is why we are starting to see more and more businesses enforce passwords on their wifi signal, so that you have to purchase in order to obtain access to the system. Because the actual paying customers legitimately purchased the right to use that service and deserve to be able to use it to the best of its capability, which depending on the size of the business and the strength of the signal may not be that great to begin with. It’s why a lot of city wifi now has to have a local account number to go with it so that only locals and subscribers to the provider can use it (that’s what they do in my hometown, no cable account? No city-wifi) – and why a lot of business are also going so far as to require a local phone number to log in our their signal, to keep tourists for stealing the signal from locals who legitimately have paid for it.
So next time you come up to me and tell me that it’s shameful that the ship doesn’t have free internet when “literally everywhere else does” – please check yourself, because if you’re operating completely above board – there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.
End public service annoucement.