N830MH

Finally!! Just about time!! They will offer a free WIFI at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. You don't have to pay for it.

Here is the link:

http://rn-t.com/view/full_story/2068...i-Fi-next-year

http://www.ajc.com/news/business/har...all-201/nSskN/

I have been wait for a long time to come. You can surfing Internet or chat with your friends. You can keep in touch.

rylan

About time, and frankly that ripoff crap Boingo hotspot service can't go bust soon enough. Too bad T-Mobile is at the bottom of the pile with them.

N830MH

Well, I just hating Boingo and we dislike it at all. It's terrible!

BringBackTWA

Here's to hoping it's faster than the speeds of the "free" internet provided in many of the ATL Sky Clubs!

...not holding my breath, however

rob0225

It wont be...think about how many people and how much traffic is going to be on that WiFi.

Orange County Commuter

Another symbol of the Mayor's efficiency? It will take a year to do this. Guess that allows enough time for his friends to learn how to install wifi and get a contract

BringBackTWA

I have been in some airports where the free WiFi is surprisingly quick (granted ATL is a different monster than most)...CLT for example is usually decently quick, despite being a US hub.

Those T-Mobile hotspots in the Sky Clubs are usually dreadfully slow, though, in my experience...

SomeGuy

I'll take anything. ATL seems to be a black hole for my AT&T service. It usually literally takes an hour to get or send one email.

I make sure to have a game or movie to keep me occupied in ATL, because I know I can't really hope for any data service.

rylan

I'm hoping with free wi-fi it will reduce the utilization of the access points in the SC and will end up faster.

javabytes

One less reason to visit the Sky Clubs

squatch

trying to squeeze ANY data through AT&T's pathetic service at ATL is impossible. let's hope they do the free wi-fi right.

WhiskeyBravo

It says they expect the load to increase by a factor of 2-3 with the free service. are they insane? with free wifi load will increase by a factor of 20x or 50x.

gooselee

I'm not sure where I get my luck, but I very rarely have problems with wifi in SCs - primarily ATL and LGA. It's not blazing fast compared to my home or office connections, but I can reliably get on my VPN, download emails with large attachments, do Exchange calendaring, etc.

I don't tend to stream music/video or anything like that b/c I don't want to hog the bandwidth, but on a couple occasions I've had to pull very large files from my work server (in the 15-20 MB range) and it never takes longer than a minute or two.

rylan

Thats what I was thinking also... because I'm sure almost nobody is paying the airport wi-fi prices. Maybe they expect people with their smartphones to keep using their data over 4G and not go to the wireless link instead.

Either way, yes AT&T seems to have awful bandwidth for hotspots also.

kthomas

I decided to arrive at ATL 3 1/2 hours early today, in hopes of getting some work done.

Paid WiFi (they don't partner with anyone) in Terminals E and F barely worked, if at all. Loading Gmail or NYT/Yahoo homepages took minutes.

If they make it free, what's the chances it will work better? I'd rather have Boingo-- sure, parts of airports don't work, too bad if you only have 10 minutes at the gate, but at least you can usually find someplace nearby where it does work.

Also: some kudos to Gogo on ATL-MEX. Except for a ~5min drop, we had service until ~50 min from MEX, which (without checking the actual position with Flightaware) seems to have been at least 250 miles out into the Gulf.

Update: after checking Flightaware: at least 300 miles out into the Gulf. Now, if they'd only put a tower in Brownsville (or in Mexico). Update2: we took a route slightly NW of New Orleans from the norm, looks to have put us closer to the coast; unknown if performance is normal for other days/routes.