Bookshelf: October 2006 Archives

Pensacola Regional Airport has free wireless Internet service. In fact, 122 out of 218 U. S. airports offer free wi-fi to travelers.

Tulsa doesn't. Although the Tulsa Airport Authority provides its own wireless service to passengers (as opposed to working with a national provider like Boingo or T-Mobile), it charges $5.95 per hour, $9.95 for the whole day. Because it's their own service, they wouldn't need a provider's cooperation to drop the charge.

What many hotels, restaurants, and airports have discovered is that if you already have a high-speed Internet connection in place for business reasons (typically there's one for handling strongly-encrypted credit card transactions), it doesn't cost much more to add a few wireless routers and open it up for other users.

There's a practical advantage: Free wi-fi allows business travelers to stay productive during delays, which makes for less tension on the concourse when a flight is rescheduled or cancelled. It also makes it possible for travelers to investigate alternate flights, so that everyone doesn't have to wait in line to get booked onto a new flight.

Mostly, though, free wi-fi would be a way to extend hospitality. It would be a way to leave a positive final impression on visitors to our city.

No, Oklahoma City doesn't have it yet, but we don't need to wait for them to go first, do we?