When I was compiling notes for my post on the best airports for wired travelers, I realized that the recent bloom of free WiFi is shrinking. Fast.

Fee-based WiFi access has become standard in most urban airports. In fact, even when companies offer to build free WiFi for cities, they are sometimes turned away as local governments prefer the tax revenue over the convenience for the travelers.

Police are cracking down on ‘free WiFi’ usage at restaurants by non-customers. (Remember the poor guy who got charged with a felony for not buying a donut?)

And even places we think of as WiFi refuges - like hotels - are quietly moving to a fee-based system. Where before you could just turn on and surf away, now you need a code associated to your room number. A bill that says the WiFi fee is ‘$0.00′ or ‘waived’  is a quiet clue that maybe it won’t always be.

One of the biggest investors in free WiFi - Earthlink - has had to stop investing as they reorganize in response to their corporate financial health. Among the cities they had planned to build free WiFi infrastructures for was the beleaguered New Orleans.

By 2006, they had completed access for a “wireless system in 20 square miles of New Orleans along the repopulated banks of the Mississippi River“. But there they must stop and future plans for other cities have been scrapped, as well.

Like most wired travelers, I had assumed that someday I would be able to flip my laptop open most anywhere, anytime - like my cell phone - and find signal.

And while that may still happen, now its clear that there will be a tug on my credit card each time I hit ‘Enter’… and that, I should of seen coming.

But didn’t.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 4th, 2007 at 7:54 am and is filed under Mobile Warrior, News, Mobility tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.