ATHENS — One bad thing about air travel are delays; the good thing is ubiquitous WiFi. For a country with very little WiFi in the outlying islands, the coverage in the Athens airport is decent. Or so I thought. Read More…
ATHENS — One bad thing about air travel are delays; the good thing is ubiquitous WiFi. For a country with very little WiFi in the outlying islands, the coverage in the Athens airport is decent. Or so I thought.
After hunting around looking WiFi I found that both of the advertised WiFi hotspots in my terminal at Athens International airport had self-assigned IP addresses (translation: no access). After that disappointment I was delighted to find out that my gate is within spitting distance of the British Airways Terraces Lounge, which had WiFi access and was part of a roaming agreement with T-Mobile.
I’ve written before about T-Mobile’s excellent US$20 per month unlimited WiFi access which I used back in June in Amsterdam and was excited to while away a few hours reading up on email and relentlessly tracking my iPod nano order – fo free. When logging into to my T-Mo account I was reminded of an email that I had selectively forgotten. There was a clear notice on the BT OpenZone login page that “Beginning June 1, 2005, a roaming charge of $0.18 per minute will be charged to your account.”
So instead of free (or rather “included”) my WiFi habit is costing me another US$10.80 per hour on top of the US$20 I already pay per month. While I’m not ready to pull its PowerPick award, T-Mobile’s WiFi service just got a little bit more expensive while roaming. I can’t complain really, I’ve got a power outlet, WiFi, and the seats don’t have those annoying bars between them so I can always take a nap too.
