Sergey Claus and his helpers, (known collectively as Google Inc.), are planning to give out a few presents to travelers until after the new year – free WiFi at 47 airports. 

Which has me wondering – why isn’t WiFi free at all airports, all the time?  I understand that there’s certainly profit to be made if net addicts or people who simply don’t want to read on a plane pay $10 or $15 to access the Internet for a few hours on grueling layovers, but technology-wise, this seems a no-brainer.  Many airlines offer free wi-fi for business class travelers in their lounges, after all, and if Virgin can offer WiFi in flight, I think the technology has certainly arrived to handle people in a concentrated location on the ground.

Which caused me to wonder – what ever happened to all those plans to cover downtown areas in municipal WiFi?  Oh – that’s right.  It wasn’t profitable enough, so the private companies paid with public funds just decided not to roll them out.  Houston actually took the penalty paid by Earthlink for backing out on the contract to set up a fully public WiFi system in Houston’s poorer neighborhoods. 

What we have here is an “electric car” problem.  We have the technology, we have the ability, the engineering isn’t new, and there’s demand that can be met.  But because the status quo is more profitable with the current technology, the status quo is retained until something comes along which is completely disruptive.

One may think that such a disruption may come from the cellphone market; where 3G and 4G networks provide a promise of Internet interconnectivity anywhere from iPhones and Blackberries.  But even in this market, there are limitations.  Apple iPhones (connected to the AT&T network) have no data caps but cannot tether to laptops, and Verizon’s Droid, which promises tethering in the near future, has a very low data cap – 10GB for $60.  

And all of it comes about because it’s more important for private companies to maximize profit than to maximize technological saturation.  The winning solution isn’t always the superior technology.  You just don’t mind it so much, because most people aren’t aware of what could be. Again – an electric car problem.  We’ve had electric cars for over a decade now and most Americans don’t even know they ever existed – or were driven on Californian roads.  Similarly, people just accept the way things are at airports and in downtown areas, never wondering if things could be better.

The typical way to push superior technology into entrenched markets are either public investment in infrastructure or increasing competition and opening new markets; though I would imagine the barriers of entry into the ISP market are rather high.

But what we can learn from this is that we can – and indeed – have a responsibility to wonder.

Can things be made better?  Is the way we do things the best way.  Obviously, you need objective measurement but ideas should be tested by experiment and service levels need to be verified.  Because you never know.  Maybe there’s a better way.