Wifi Business: AT&T Buys Wayport

Andy Abramson has posted with respect to AT&T deciding to purchase Wayport and so expand their Wifi hotspot business. Although I still prefer to not do business with AT&T I have over the years spent a considerable sum with Wayport. Such is the life of one who inhabits hotels quite frequently.

Andy notes, and I’m very pleased to hear, that one of the beneficiaries of the deal will be Boingo. While I haven’t posted about this before I’ve been using Boingo for about a year. In fact I just upgraded my account to their Boingo Unlimited access.

I signed on for the servcie because  there were a lot of times when I was killing time in airports or hotels and needing to pay for short term internet access. When I was lucky I’d be able to get on the free Wifi at one of Continental Airlines’ President’s Club lounges or an affiliated lounge. But frequently no such resource was available.

Pay-per-use access is costly, so a monthly membership with Boingo can makes some sense. The Boingo login tool is handy as well. If the hotspot you’re near is affiliated with Boingo it logs you in without any web login at all. Very slick.

For now I’ll stay with Boingo an see what happens in the larger 3G/4G mobile data market. There may come a time when prices drop and access is sufficiently broad that it makes more sense that wifi. But not today.