A few days ago I was at Toronto’s International Centre for a conference when I wanted to access the Wi-Fi network to check my email.
I was shocked at the prices…
$99 for one day of “Ultra-lite” Wi-fi service?
It’s not like this place was in the middle of nowhere. Sure, it’s out by the airport but still part of the metropolitan area of a major North American city.
-Parker
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Welcome to the dark ages…. glad I don’t live in a technological third world.
My phone has unlimited internet and expressly allowed tethering for £20 per month. I don’t use it often though as almost every where I go there’s a free WiFi service.
Actually, it mostly works in Uganda as well – slow but still free.
[...] $150 a day for wifi at Tornto Conference Center September 22, 2011 Link [...]
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I was at the Mandalay Bay for a convention earlier this month and the wifi fee was over $500.
[...] A few days ago I was at Toronto's International Centre for a conference when I wanted to access the Wi-Fi network to check my email. I was shocked at the prices… $99 for one day of “Ultra-lite” Wi-fi service? It's not like this … Read more from the original source: Most Expensive Wi-Fi Ever? [...]
Parker – The International Centre charges exhibitors for internet connections so they can run POS systems, demos, and whatever else. If they offered you, the casual email checker, a cheap alternative, exhibitors would use that depriving them of a huge revenue stream.
[...] costs more than a hundred dollars a day to use the wifi at the convention center in [...]
[...] costs more than a hundred dollars a day to use the wifi at the convention center in [...]
That is definitely…
…
…
uncommon. :)
I live in Toronto, and there are tons of places with free wifi (McDonald’s is particularly fast :D)
[...] costs more than a hundred dollars a day to use the wifi at the convention center in [...]
subsidies, subsidies…
For those who are questioning pricing, here is a little explanation why from a Network Installer:
-Convention Centres have a Huge Area to cover, typically 500,000 to 1,000,000sq-ft. You’ll need 120 Access points to cover this space @ $800-1200 each. Your $100 D-Link or Cisco Router just won’t do. It would crash.
-Mandate to support up to 2000 clients, requires a Controller to support this, $12,000-$25,000 each.
-This all requires plenty of Bandwidth, typically min. 100mbps Up & Down. Around $5000-8000 a month.
So if you look at covering this area, there is around a $500,000-750,000 Investment plus a $9000-12,000 monthly running cost if you want warranty and monitoring systems on your network plus a Salary of an onsite Network guru. We are all in a business to make money as we are not non-profit. Think of Bell Canada and Rogers or TekSavy. You all pay $40-60 a month and the GTA has a population of 3.6Million people which equals $144,000,000 a MONTH IN REVENUE. If you think of a Conference Centre, they are like a Bell or Rogers but during events only. Unfortunately, Networking is not Cheap and in reality, to offer Wireless, you need a robust Wired Network behind it. There you have it, Cheers.
[...] costs more than a hundred dollars a day to use the wifi at the convention center in [...]
[...] costs more than a hundred dollars a day to use the wifi at the convention center in [...]
Not to take the side of the convention managers.
Very good point on wifi access costs. Now, this is not going to turn around quickly.
Architecture issues: A lot of the convention centers were built as fortresses, so now wifi access points are difficult to execute.
Heavy investment: For a trade center, the wifi infrastructure alone can run from 500K to a lot more than that – not inexpensive technology.
When talking to the infrastructure managers that try to keep the capital costs down while maintaining competitiveness, this is one of the wicked issues.
Security: The other issue to consider is security of the wifi network. Everyone expects open access – with all the manageability complexity of the firewall and scanning.