WiFi at the Airport
It is welcome news that the Eureka Arcata Airport will now offer free wireless Internet accessibility. Many thanks are due to the Redwood Technology Consortium and the various contractors that helped put together the details. Now those of us who fly a LOT will have one more avenue of productivity and survival on the road.
I leave tomorrow for Richmond, Virginia for project-related work. This will be the fifth time I've flown into and out of the local airport so far this year. As is usually the case, at least half of these trips involved some re-routing of one or more legs of the journey due to weather or the other list of causes. Making sure your flight is on time and that you'll make needed connections means using telecommunications to confirm or adjust on the fly (as it were).
Sometimes this means an automated responder calling my cellphone from United Airlines, or a quick Internet check of optional flight connections. Just having this local WiFi connection at the airport means a whole lot just on the travel side of the equation.
Then there is the time-and-space continuum that requires me to check email frequently. I am still batting information back and forth between the US and Hong Kong, dating back to my initial engagement there with the Hong Kong Judiciary in 1997. While this is an extreme case, just syncing schedules between the West and East Coasts is a major chore, especially when one is in the air for a good stretch of the day. The local airport connection will now allow me to clean up some email responses before hopping on my first flight of the day.
Finally, there is the whole "get it" issue. When I fly into and out of an airport where there is no Internet connectivity, it speaks volumes to me about the lack of tech sophistication of that community (I'll be charitable and not name names). Our airport is already a vital link in the local economic chain, and with the new WiFi connection our many visitors will now see that doing business is Humboldt is not unnecessarily difficult.
It is also a pleasant surprise that the airport connection is free. I always smile when I am able to snag a free WiFi link at an airport, coffee shop or hotel when I'm on the road.
So I'm off to Virginia ... I'm looking forward to the work there (and the grits). I'm also looking forward to surfing the 'Net at ACV !!!
Chris Crawford
www.justiceserved.com
Comments
Any idea how much it cost to install the airport's wifi connection?
Posted by: Fred Mangels | March 26, 2007 03:10 PM
It was surprisingly cheap as I recall. According to the TS article, the total hard costs were $500 or so and the monthly fee is around $150. However, a lot of people donated their time and effort to get this done so it would have been a LOT more if it weren't for Tina Nerat and the Redwood Technology Consortium (www.redwoodtech.org)
Chris Crawford
Posted by: Chris Crawford | April 6, 2007 12:13 AM