Access to the Internet is becoming more and more something that we take for granted. Case in point Fred Wilson blogging on an Aeroplane. It is true that (here in Europe) aeroplane Internet access is not common for short flights but what with GPRS, WiFi in airport terminals, hotels, cafés and so on it is certainly becoming something that is limited more by willingness to pay the price than by availability.

The question of price is something that has caused many a hot Internet startup to fail, and when it comes to something like Internet access for nomadic users the price question is clearly key. Travellers rarely need to use the Internet while in the airport, hotel etc. thus they are unwilling to pay premium prices for it, yet they will use it if it is cheap (or free). Tied in with the price is the level of service: many WiFi services are of variable quality; even if the WiFi link itself is fast, the uplink speed to the Internet can often be overwhelmed. For a free service this level of quality is acceptable, but it is unacceptable when access is only via premium pricing.

Unfortunately offering the service for free is not a good way to recover the money spent on the hardware unless you can make the business case that free provision of Internet access leads to higher customer spend somewhere else (or higher numbers of customers).