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| Guide to Canadian airport Wi-Fi... |
January 9, 2006 |
By Trevor Marshall
THE PLAN:
PROVIDE A GUIDE TO WI-FI IN MAJOR CANADIAN AIRPORTS
THE REALITY:
MANY AIRPORTS DON’T WANT TO DISCUSS THEIR PLANS
In general, airports are frustrating places to be. They’re just a stop on the way to somewhere else, but it’s often a long stop, made more so in recent years by tightened security measures.
So what do travellers, especially business types, want to do with all this waiting time? Be productive obviously, and that means being connected to the Web, to e-mail and to their office systems.
While Internet kiosks and cafés are springing up in airports, the most elegant solution is using Wi-Fi on a laptop to get things done.
And are Canadian airports serving the needs of their customers?
Some are, and some won’t say if they are or not. In an effort to provide readers with information on Wi-Fi services at the Canadian airports most frequented by business travellers, Backbone placed repeated requests for interviews with officials at Toronto’s Lester B. Pearson International Airport (YYZ), Montreal-Trudeau Airport (YUL ) and Calgary International Airport (YYC). These airports were unable to accommodate interview requests.
We heard, in no particular order, that Wi-Fi plans were being formulated but couldn’t be discussed; that the plan that was in place had been altered and couldn’t be discussed; and that a plan could be discussed but not by the person answering the phone, and the right person was unavailable to take the call.
Interestingly, other airports are far more aggressive, jumping on Wi-Fi as a means to streamline their internal processes and improve the travel experience of their customers.
Vancouver sets benchmark
Vancouver International Airport (YVR) has an aggressive program to roll out Wi-Fi services for its staff, business partners, including the airlines, and the travelling public. As such, the airport is setting a benchmark from which all Canadian airports could learn.
Kevin Molloy, vice-president of simplified passenger travel and chief information officer at the Vancouver International Airport Authority, said the airport initially installed its own private wireless LAN to track travellers’ bags. The system required continuous coverage around the terminal and out to the tail of each airplane.
“(But) we have this plan where we’re basically building out all of our airport lands,” he said. “Right now we’ve pushed it out into the (short-term) parking facilities, but our plan over the next 12 months is to push it out so it’ll be available even as you drive up the main road to the airport terminal.”
Keep the airport running
The goal, Molloy said, is to have wireless available to everyone who keeps the airport running, whether that’s maintaining payment machines in the parking garage or replacing lights on the runways. Molloy said the airport would like to use wireless to extend its existing Voice over IP telephone system to mobile workers. “Just for my own internal staff I pay hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for cellphones,” he said, explaining the extensive coverage offered by mobile carriers is overkill for his needs.
“The vast majority of our employees are maintenance workers, airport duty managers and others — so 99 per cent of their work is done on the airport land.”
Airlines currently use the wireless network for a variety of functions, such as performing pre-flight checks and loading new content into in-flight entertainment systems.
“From an infrastructure and capacity perspective, we said to the airlines, ‘It’s here, it’s built and paid for, it’s operating; why don’t you take advantage of it?’” Molloy added that the capability is offered free to commercial users. In turn, several of the airlines make this Wi-Fi network available for free to travellers in their first-class lounges.
Wi-Fi for flyers
In addition, YVR boasts a public hotspot powered by Telus. The signal is available throughout the public spaces of the terminal and Telus charges standard rates for access.
YVR promotes this service with in-terminal advertising, brochures, ads on the backs of boarding cards and on the airport’s Web site.
More importantly from a traveller’s perspective, the airport advertises that its own Web site can be accessed from the hotspot login page at no cost.
“We wanted to be able to provide Wi-Fi users with free access to airport authority content, be it way-finding, flight information or anything else,” Molloy said, noting monitors in the airport only display flight information for a four-hour period, but by using Internet-enabled kiosks or their own Wi-Fi equipment, travellers can check for information on flights that are further into the future.
Free access to the YVR Web site, Molloy said, “has probably been the most popular service.”
Ottawa: not free but popular
Free access to the airport authority’s Web site is also a feature at Ottawa International Airport (YOW), where Concourse Communications of Chicago and Ottawa-based BOLDstreet provide a system that’s used by the public, the airlines and the airport authority.
“You can get a lot of interference if you have too many systems trying to operate in the airport,” said John Spinks, vice-president of business development and marketing for the airport. The airport opted for a non-carrier provider “so anybody who already has a service provider can log on and go directly into their own service.”
Currently, Wi-Fi service at YOW is available for one price ($9.95 for 24 hours), but Spinks is in talks with Concourse about offering additional plans for shorter time blocks.
Even so, the 24-hour plan has proved popular with travellers.
“We’re getting a lot of hits. We are a high business travel market. We’re probably getting close to 60 per cent business vs. leisure,” Spinks said. “But there are a lot of leisure travellers using it as well.”
The popularity of the service may be linked to strong promotion throughout the terminal building. “We probably have 15 to 20 fairly large brochure racks with an Internet sign on them that clearly tells people it’s available and how to log on,” Spinks said.
Atlantic Canada deals
From a pricing perspective, the best Wi-Fi deals at Canadian airports are to be found on the east coast. The region’s telecom company, Aliant, is running Wi-Fi pilot projects at a number of airports in the region, including Halifax.
Michael Healy, director of planning and engineering for the Halifax International Airport Authority, said right now the airport has limited Wi-Fi coverage but it will be significantly improved as part of a $120 million expansion and upgrade of the airport. “We’re in the process of coming to grips with how we’re going to move forward,” he said. “We intend to put a complete wireless solution throughout the complex, both from a public access perspective and also on the private side for use by the airport authority and the airlines, including to facilitate mobile computing on the apron.”
Ubiquitous wireless coverage is part of a technology plan that recently saw a single wired network deployed throughout the terminal to carry all IP traffic from the airport and its business partners. “Putting in a good, high-quality infrastructure is expensive, and the ability to spread that over multiple users obviously has economic benefits,” said Keith Glover, an IT consultant working with Healy.
The Aliant trial is also underway in Moncton. “We’ve been part of the project for about a year now,” said Paul Ward, director of finance and administration at the Greater Moncton International Airport (YQM). Ward notes Wi-Fi is available throughout the terminal and that “it’s free for now.”
And if you’re stuck in a terminal for an hour and a half, “free Wi-Fi” may be the best two words you’ll ever hear.
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