Boston Globe – January 2, 2006:
Logan International Airport officials’ ongoing quest to ban airline lounges from offering passengers free WiFi Internet services is angering a growing array of powerful Capitol Hill lobbying groups, who say Logan could set a dangerous nationwide precedent for squelching wireless services.
But it’s not about protecting an asinine business model, it’s about safety!
Massport attorney Christine M. Gill said the charges of a Massport WiFi monopoly ”may be great sloganeering” but misstate many key legal issues. Reiterating that public safety and prevention of interference are Massport’s concerns, Gill said that ”Congress has not granted the FCC the authority to preempt private lease restrictions on the siting of antennas used for fixed wireless signals.” Gill also said Continental and its allies have hung their arguments on a law that applies only to wireless video signals, not WiFi.
Yeah, right…
However, Gill also acknowledged that ”installation of a WiFi antenna in Continental’s Presidents Club would have a detrimental economic impact on Massport.”
And admitted that
”Massport would also lose revenue associated with the operation of the central WiFi antenna system at Logan.”
So we finally get to the truth! The airport simply does NOT want competition.
When did protecting business models by force come in vogue?! I remember the old days when corporations talked about getting the government out of the way to help competition. Now they essentially argue that competition is hurting them and it needs to be eliminated under threat of law. So can we finally stop calling it free market capitalism and call it what it really is: Greed.
The assumption that this would happen any other way is the one most likely to be false. States and municipalities are kneeling down and serving the Cable and DSL industries by making it hard/impossible/illegal to offer inexpensive wireless access.
Comcast bloody well owns the state of Pennsylvania in terms of gaining legislation that is beneficial to themselves and harmful to consumers.
In my hometown of Flint Michigan you have a choice between Comcast’s horribly mismanaged cable service and the Yahoo/SBC DSL (and adding Yahoo promises that I will avoid it) with no other choices available. We are not as backwards as Michael Moron presented us to be, but our lack of decent infrastructure combined with wholly owned local government makes its unlikely it will ever improve.
I would kill to be back in Cincinnati with the multiple lower cost options because in Flint 65 dollars a month gets you 384kup/6meg down (which actually tests at 128kup/768 most of the time down) and SBC/yahoo runs the same.
I disagree that municipalities are kneeling down and serving the Cable and DSL industries. All you have to do is look at the hundreds of cities that are gearing up to offer free/cheap wifi.
As it relates to the article being discussed, Massport does a disservice to its customers if it chooses 802.11 for public safety data communications. Given that the spectrum is unlicensed, there are bound to be interference issues. Because one network provides public safety communications while another provides P2P filesharing is of little matter. The frequencies are there for anyone who wishes to use them.
This is why all public safety agencies use *licenced* voice frequencies (most common are in the 400mhz and 800mhz) ranges. A much better choice would be for public safety to move to the now available 4.9Ghz frequencies set aside by the FCC for, guess what? Licensed public safety data communications.
Although if they did that, then Massport would have as “compelling” of a reason to shut down the free competition.
I think in this particular case I have to agree with Steve’s initial assessment…this is driven purely by greed. Massport stands to lose money for every user who goes to the American or Continental terminals to use free wifi when the airport is charging $8 for 24 hours of use.
(Which is ludicrous. The last time I was in an airport the longest layover I had was 2 hours…that makes it $4 per hour, not the $0.33 Massport would have you think it is.)
Besides, as Ira states, what agency in their right minds would use 802.11 for public safety communications? I’m a network administrator for the USGS and we are forbidden from using 802.11 for any network operations, whether they be business, public safety, public relations or scientific reasons. Why? Its not secure! Who would try to run a public safety service on an unsecure network?
Ira, you mention hundreds of cities, but the problem is it is simply NOT true. Hundreds have tried, very few have actually done so, check out comcastwatch.com and read the fun Penn is having with them. In the end result you sound like an apologist for their policies.
Massport is a government agency, and they hate competition. The Post Office was going around fining businesses for using UPS in the 90’s.
If you have an advantage over your competition then you call it “Free Market Enterprise”. If you are being forced out of business or trying to get in, then it becomes “an Unfair Advantage”.
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Remember not too many years ago when AT&T would not allow you to connect your equipment to their equipment. The reasoning was that your equipment could harm the whole system.
“Remember not too many years ago when AT&T…”
Yeah, and at the time AT&T was a monopoly that was eventually broken up. And I certainly remember that because we were actually able to put a SECOND phone in our three story house for no extra money!!! It was so exciting!