I’ve been in Beijing for a while. This is the first of a series of
blog entries relating to that trip.
Why does it cost $10 to get internet connection for one day at an
airport like JFK? The cost behind it cannot be much more than a DSL
line at $30 per month and renting a closet at the airport.
One would assume that, if allowed, any of the stores present could
easily put up a competing service. They probably need the internet
connection or something similar for credit card authorization anyway.
But clearly competition is not working here as prices have not come
down from the skies. I would assume that there is a local monopoly in
place. I can see good reasons for imposing such a thing in an
airport. After all you do not want too much unrelated radio traffic
going on when you have a fleet of airplanes to handle, but couldn’t
they at least have made it a duopoly? Or put price limits on the
monopoly?
In the meantime, would it be unethical to set up a ip-over-dns gateway?
They seem to allow dns lookups for free.