I just received an email “Boingo announces the addition of NomadISP to the Boingo Roaming Network, giving Boingo members access to close to 300 new hotspots located at RV parks across US and Canada.”
If RVers could pay one monthly fee and have access to Wi-Fi hotspots at RV parks all over the country, they’d be signing up in droves! Boingo’s ad claims “Connect any time you like, for as long as you want, at thousands of North American hotspots for just $9.95/month for 3 months!”
The main thing is simply that RVers are not Boingo’s target market. Most of those ‘thousands of hotspots’ are hotels, restaurants and McDonalds. Boingo is servicing the traveling business person.
If you found yourself in the campground with the sign pictured here, a Boingo membership would do you no good. They’ve never heard of Boingo and you need to pay $9.95/day to get online here!
NomadISP, the subject of their press release IS for RV parks. But many, if not all, of the parks listed on their site offer Wi-Fi as an included amenity. So, once again, you would not be using your Boingo account.
What Boingo is doing is admirable. They are providing a backoffice system for Wi-Fi hotspots that allows ‘roaming.’ Think of Wi-Fi hotspots like the early days of cell phones when there was no roaming among the different carriers. And Wi-Fi hotspots today are a lot more scattered than Cellular providers ever were. Many hotspots at RV parks are even homegrown systems.
I don’t think roaming among RV park Wi-Fi hotspots is ever going to happen. My husband, Jim, and I used to do contract work for Coach Connect (now MatrixRV) who installed Wi-Fi in RV parks all over the country. It was Jim’s job to support those parks. At on time, we were part of a aggregator similar to Boingo, and it just didn’t work. If you’re paying Boingo, for example, and you have a problem; you’re going to call Boingo for help. But they don’t have a clue how the Wi-Fi is set up where you are! They just do the billing.
Luckily for RVers, we really don’t need roaming with Wi-Fi hotspots. So many RV Parks offer Wi-Fi as a free amenity now. And most of the ones that charge are very reasonable, $2 – $5/day. If you need Internet more reliable than the ‘catch-as-catch-can’ Wi-Fi hotspots, you can get a data card from your cellular provider. The coverage from cellular data has improved immensely in the last couple years.
The bottom line is, don’t sign up for a national Wi-Fi plan, it’s not a good deal for RVers. The only exception would be if you know, ahead of time, that you will be staying all in parks that are covered by the plan. If anyone has done this, please leave us a comment.
Chris Guld
www.GeeksOnTour.com
Computer Education for Travelers