The airport has an interesting history with Wi-Fi that I've been writing occasionally about since 2003: It's a fairly small airport, not atypical for state and province capitals that tend to be located in politically expedient places that aren't often also bustling metropolises compared to the big towns that developed in their political unit. (Olympia? Albany? Austin?)
Sacramento originally contracted with Airport Network Solutions, which said back in 2003 that it would cost $110,000 to add service. I noted in Aug. 2003 that without aggregation and resale they'd never recoup even the modest cost based on their assumptions of users and what they were charging for a day pass ($6.95). The airport apparently bore the cost of installation repaid out of fees rather than requiring its contractor to eat Capx, which is quite odd.
ICOA bought the installing company in Nov. 2003, and it has resale relationships with many aggregators and operates service at quite a wide array of medium-sized airports in North America.
The Sacramento Bee story today says that the contract with ICOA expired and the service never produced revenue sharing that exceeded the cost of the equipment. But the airport now owns the equipment, it appears, and is offering free service.
If only they'd have pulled the plug 2 weeks ago when I sat waiting for my redeye home. I couldn't stomach spending $7 for an hour or two. As it was, I waited until I landed in Birmingham where we have had free wifi for years to ship off some important emails.
Much better than Boston Airport where the airport authority has misused its authority to ban WiFi from the airport and airport lounges.
Except for the _paid_ service the airport authority runs, of course.
[Editor's note: Boston-Logan hasn't succeeded; the FCC has yet to rule and then the courts could get involved. It's an important far-reaching issue. If the airport authority is allowed to use its position as a landlord to regulate usage of unlicensed spectrum--whether or not they also claim that "security" is involved--then that opens the door to many entities claiming a role, indoors and out. The FCC has clearly stated on many many occasions that only the FCC has the power to regulate the use of spectrum. --gf]