All hail free and functioning wifi

On each leg of my West Coast swing this week, I have arrived at the airport sufficiently early to turn the gate area into my remote office. The good news is wifi has been available at each airport.

The cost and dependability, however, have been mixed.

On the way to Logan International Airport last Sunday, I took the Green Shuttle of Cape Cod, which had free wifi in the car. That's right... in the car! I had recently read about wifi-enabled cars, and was even asked by a colleague on what the use case would be. Use case ahoy!

Once at Logan, however, a day pass to use the wifi in the new Terminal A costs $7.95. Funny how Comcast-sponsored signs indicating the availability of wifi make no mention of price.

(To be fair, the Massport Web site mentions the price, but clearly I did not check the Web site before I got connected.)

Later in the week, while at Rogue Valley International Airport, the wifi was free and reliable. My flight was delayed three hours, and I had nary a care. I was so productive that I didn't realize until it was too late that my only food option was a vending machine, thanks to the one restaurant in Medford being outside the security checkpoint.

Finally, today, there is free wifi available in Sacramento International Airport. The bad news is it keeps disconnecting me every minute or so. It's so annoying that I've reverted to my Blackberry modem as backup. The bandwidth is not as robust, so it's taking forever to send an e-mail that was promised an hour ago. I've even had time to write this blog post while the e-mail has been on its way.

So why is it that of the three airports I've traversed this week, the smallest has been the most gracious and supportive of business travelers?

Hotels get it. Hampton Inn is my most frequent home away from home, and the sole deciding factor is the free wifi and free breakfast. While I was in Stockton, CA, the Courtyard by Marriott got my business this trip, because of its location and free wifi.

Isn't it in the airlines' best interest to pony up and subsidize the free wifi in the gate areas? If the goal is to get all of the business travelers assembled at the gate early enough so that loading the airplanes is efficient, decreasing the amount of idle time for the plane at the gate, why wouldn't free wifi be a succesful ingredient in that formula?

And if the airport authorities want business travelers to spend more time in airports, if only to increase the chances of them buying more food and beverages, free wifi would be a pretty inexpensive investment for that equation to end up in their favor, too.

We business travelers are not asking for much. We're already getting nickeled and dimed by the airlines, and seemingly to the airlines eventual detriment. $15 to check a bag? No wonder everyone is overstuffing the overhead bins. That can't help the plane load times either.

Maybe I should create a cardboard sign and wear it aorund the airports: Will work for free wifi that works. In this day and age, it seems a pretty small thing to ask.

Update (7:41 p.m.): Just landed in Atlanta. Wifi access requires a T-Mobile day pass: $5.99. At least it's not kicking me off.