Sitting in departure lounge 3 at Schiphol airport, waiting for my flight to Manchester. As is natural at times and places like this when you have a spare sixty minutes or so, I connect to the net to pick up email and to see what’s going on.
I tell you, Schiphol’s wifi pricing is about the most ridiculous I’ve seen anywhere. Two payment choices – either 6 euro for 30 minutes or 10 euro for 24 hours. Wifi service at this airport is via Attingo, a Netherlands-based company I’ve not come across before.
Six euro for 30 minutes! Daylight robbery! I thought Heathrow was expensive at 5 euro pounds for one hour via T-Mobile, but this is ridiculous.
Just time to check RSS feeds, maybe email as well, and rant a bit.
Oops, time’s up. Jeez.
If you think that price is bad, you should see the price of wifi on the Blogonomics Cruise! You would think a huge ship with all of the creature compforts and a recent facelift would have wifi, but you would of course be mistaken. They are charging a king’s ransom! We could use a donate to wifi button!
http://www.blogonomics.net
I know what you mean. I spent a lot of Saturday night lugging my laptop around looking for free WiFi in Vancouver (all my usual favs were closed). We finally found a place that charged $3 CDN for all day access — of course being 9 PM we didn’t quite get our money’s worth but still.
Ahh, but the wifi in Dubai airport is free, mate! Not just in the business lounge, but the whole airport…
That’s pricey!
Clearly a chord has been struck!
I understand the business model, I guess, of charging for net access in the general areas of an airport. But what I saw at Schiphol Amsterdam today is nothing more than a rip-off. Pricey indeed, Drew. Tris, your $3 looks pretty reasonable. Best of all is Dubai, Lee!
Jim, I presented at a conference last June on a cruise ship. That also charged for net access, eye-watering prices. It was satellite connectivity, about which I don’t understand the business model.
So I’m in my hotel room writing this, the Radisson Edwardian in Manchester. Free wifi… 😉
I read recently that Schiphol is the most expensive international airport in the world.
Things that are either cheap or free in other international aiports cost ¥€$.
Plus the landing tax is the highest.
Not really encouraging innovators to locate themselves here are they.
Ummmmm ….”either 6 euro for 30 minutes or 10 euro for 24 hours”… surely the 10-euro option is not a bad deal if you are stuck for a couple of hours, no?
Maybe there should be a league table with a Rogue’s Gallery section. Here’s my contribution: Thistle Hotel at Whitehall Court, Westminster, London – taking a leaf from Schipol airport but with no wi-fi. £125 the first 30 minutes – no charge the next 23 and a half hours. Gatwick airport – there’s a couple of pay and play ‘spots’ run by T-Mobile but they don’t tell you the charges until you plug in. So I don’t know. Anyone?
I’m envious of the free wifi in the room, though. In both Dubai and Qatar I had to pay for the room wifi, but in Dubai the lounge had free wifi (go figure, as ‘the cousins’ would say).
I’m off to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia in May – be interesting to see what facilities they offer there. Perhaps this can become part of Shel’s travel blog — an update on ‘wifi around the world’
I’ve found free wifi in a couple of US airports, for example Colorado Springs.
More recently I’ve found a couple of hotels that have free wifi had broken and non-functional wifi! Imagine if the phone didn’t work – equally important to most of us, but the hotels just didn’t get it.