AWSJ: Hong Kong's PCCW Sets Up New Airport Hub On Internet
07:58, 2001-04-26
By H. Asher Bolande Staff Reporter
HONG KONG -- Pacific Century CyberWorks Ltd. and Hong Kong International Airport have launched a service giving travelers in one of the region's busiest air-travel hubs wireless high-speed access to the Internet.
For HK$80 (US$10.26) a day or HK$40 an hour, customers can use their own laptop to access the Web almost anywhere in the sprawling airport, including departure lounges, restaurants and VIP lounges. To link in, the laptops must be equipped with a radio-networking card based on the international 802.11b standard, but such cards could soon become standard equipment; Dell Computer Corp. and International Business Machines Corp. have already stated plans to bundle them with certain laptop models. The modem cards can be added to notebooks for about US$100, and prices are dropping.
Users either register and pay for the service by visiting a PCCW shop inside the airport or through an online transaction - laptops using the radio-networking cards automatically display a PCCW Web page when they open their browser in the airport, according to company officials.
""Travelers can enjoy the convenience of broadband Internet between flights,"" said Thomas Siu, the president of PCCW's business eSolutions division, citing the ability to catch up on e-mail or download large documents.
The service's No. 1 target is the laptop-toting business traveler, although coming generations of hand-held personal digital assistants will also be able to patch into 802.11b-based networks. The airport handled more than 32 million passengers last year, about 30% of whom were transit passengers, according to Hong Kong Airport Authority officials.
PCCW installed the airport network at its own expense and will operate it under a five-year nonexclusive contract with the authority. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed, but Mr. Siu said the two sides would split revenue. The network cost ""a couple of million Hong Kong dollars"" to build, he said.
Similar wireless local-area networks, or LANs, are beginning to appear in airports, convention centers and hotels in North America, and Mr. Siu said an important commercial goal is to form reciprocity agreements so that travelers who pay for the service in any airport will enjoy it in others that are similarly equipped. ""The whole idea is to have this roaming arrangement,"" he said, adding that some discussions were already under way.
Singapore's airport launched a wireless service in certain terminals a year ago, but it is free of charge. Coffee chain Starbucks Corp. announced recently it plans to equip all 3,000 of its North American shops for 802.11b access over the next two to three years.
Copyright c 1999-2000 Dow Jones Inc. All rights reserved.
quamnet.com |
