Wonder what took them so long?

Late flash from the Denver Post, tipped to us by Glenn Fleishman over at Wi-Fi Networking News: Denver International Airport has liberated its Wi-Fi. Too bad they hadn't done it six months ago, when I passed through a couple of times.

I mention this here not only because, as you recall, I made note of DIA being play-for-pay back then, but it seems some details in the story back up my assertion that large-scale installations like this are really untenable these days unless they're free. Consider: DIA claimed that as many as 20,000 users per month were willing to pony up $8 to use the network. All right then, let's do the math. That comes out to just under $2 million in annual revenue. Plainly and simply, unwiring the airport and maintaining the network couldn't possibly cost anywhere near that much-meaning that someone in Denver has either been hitting the Christmas spirit(s) a little too hard, or isn't being exactly truthful about how popular the service actually was. There's no way a cash cow that productive would have been sent to slaughter.

Of course, all I know is what I read in the papers-except for not having seen anyone actually using the network back in May during either of my two stops. I'd think I would have if they were really selling 600 connections per day, don't you?