Free Wi-Fi Coming to SFO

Well here's some good news for Bay Area travelers - San Francisco International Airport (SFO) will begin offering free Wi-Fi on September 1st. Currently passengers only get access if they pay up. The other two Bay Area airports, Oakland and San Jose, have been featuring free Wi-Fi for a little while now.

So - why do this?  Naturally the airport has said this will make passengers happy. Which is true. But I have to think some other factors are at play here as well.

First, I think smartphones have changed the situation here. My biggest internet activities (of which e-mail is the biggest) can easily be done on my iPhone, and I have an unlimited data plan, so I don't need Wi-Fi like I needed to before. Sure, Wi-Fi is generally faster, but is it worth the cost? 3G gets the job done on basic Internet tasks with no major issues. When inflight Wi-Fi got going, there were less smartphone users out there, so when you're (essentially) the only game in town, people will pay for your service. But now things have changed.

Another (growing) factor I see here is the proliferation of inflight Wi-Fi. If I'm taking a transcon flight that lasts around five hours, that will cost me $12.95 on a Gogo-equipped aircraft. Why would I pay for Wi-Fi in the airport that I'm only going to use for a little over an hour if I have five hours of Wi-Fi bliss coming up on my flight? And inflight Wi-Fi continues to become a more viable option as it is installed on more and more aircraft nationwide. Plus, if one has a monthly plan the cost per usage goes down even further, making airport Wi-Fi look even worse.

So my guess is that SFO saw declining revenues from Wi-Fi purchases and had to make a decision. Free Wi-Fi will certainly make its travelers happy. Plus, my guess is that the service will still be supported with ads on the login page (I'm not sure though), and maybe the revenue from that will be more than what came from the purchases!

Either way, this is good news.