Yesterday I was at the Burbank airport where AT&T and Tmobile wifi day passes are available. Take a look at these screenshots: (click to enlarge)
Every step maximizes friction:
- Do I want Tmobile or AT&T?
- There are so many offerings, which one do I need?
- So, if I’m already with AT&T, do I have to pay, or do I need to “upgrade my account”?
- Why do I have to fill in so many fields to get billed?
- The design is terrible. Some text is so small it’s unreadable.
- Why do I have to make so many decisions? Forget it, I’ll just start writing a post about how airport wifi sucks.
Forget my one time $20 purchase, think of the long term opportunities:
- Tmobile or AT&T could build goodwill by making wifi free. I’d happily give them my email address for free wifi. If I’m not a customer they could start a dialog with me about their “business traveller” plans or whatever. They could certainly make me sit through a commercial for free wifi.
- If I’m already a Tmobile or AT&T customer, wifi should be free. I already feel nickel and dimed by telcos, don’t make it worse.
- You know I’m at the airport. Serve up airport/travel related ads and make wifi free.
- The airlines could sponsor wifi in airports. If I know that all Southwest terminals have wifi, guess who I’ll want to fly?
In other news, Starbucks is offering “free” wifi, but not without making it really hard to figure out.
One Comment
Thanks for this post. I’m flying out of Burbank on Wed. and just realized I had never been in the airport long enough to need my laptop. I was wondering if the airport had wifi (which should be a no-brainer, better free) and this post came up in my google search.
Disheartening to learn my options are those two. We ended our T-Mobile account last year, but $4 for AT&T isn’t that bad, though wifi at McCarran Airport is free and pretty fast.