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« Reach WiFiNetNews Readers | Main | Funk's WPA Supporting Client »

April 7, 2003

That Won't Fly

Heathrow Wi-Fi: $130 per month?: Heathrow Airport in London now has Wi-Fi service in Terminal One at an oddly high rate: £6 per hour or £85 per month which is about US$10 and US$130. It further hammers home why vendor-neutral host solutions are best in which many competitors get access for a fixed rate to an airport's infrastructure.

I can't see this rate standing because the uptick will be close to nil beyond casual use. This is seatback airphone pricing.

Update: Alan Reiter, Julian Bond, and others have written to let me know that this pricing is British Telecom's standard hot spot rate, so ostensibly £85 covers unlimited service at all BT hot spots, not just Heathrow. Still seems expensive to me, but until there are alternatives and more competition, unlikely to change.

6 Comments

That looks like BT Openzone's standard WiFi pricing.
http://www.bt.com/openzone/buying.htm

What can I say? It's ridiculous.

Crazy Brits!

They clearly have a problem differentiating between the words 'adoption' and 'astronomical'.

The pricing model is clearly reserved for those lucky enough to be flying Concorde.

Cheers Nigel (a Brit in exile)

Agreed. One little anecdote though, I talked to a stranger using T-mobile WiFi at a Starbucks in the UK. I asked him if he thought £5 per hour was excessive and he said no because he could claim it back on expenses. I pointed out that Internet cafes were a third of the price and he said he preferred to relax in an armchair rather than be surrounded by backpackers.

I also challenged BT on their pricing and was told "It's cheaper than 3G" !!

BT Openzone's prices are indeed crazy. We ran this story a while ago: http://www.unstrung.com/document.asp?doc_id=27667

What are they thinking of?

Yes. I blogged this a few weeks ago. It's an absolutely inane pricing structure. All non-business users are going to be priced out of the market almost immediately.

This is in clear conflict with the UK's self-imposed mandate to become the European country with the highest take-up of broadband Internet access by 2005.

British Telecom has always been a monopolistic behemoth. Hard to shake off their heritage as a former state run monopoly.

They've NEVER introduced anything at a competitive rate, they always go in sky high and hold the prices until they either feel the competition snapping at their heels or they buckle under the weight of political or media barrages.

BT is more about showing off their apparent technical expertise as opposed to being the kick-starter of a new technology/service.

This is a service for well-heeled and well-expensed road warriors. I'm sad to say this is NOT an everyman network.

Cheers Nigel