JiWire And AWG Partner To Bring More Free, Ad-Supported Wi-Fi To Airports

Is there anything worse than scampering through airport security, getting to your gate, firing up your laptop to send one last important e-mail before an intercontinental flight... and finding that the airport Wi-Fi will run you $10 per hour? Well, sure, but we could probably count those things on one hand. To combat that feeling, JiWire has announced a partnership with AWG (Advanced Wireless Group), the largest provider of free Wi-Fi in North American airports, to offer free, ad-supported Wi-Fi to travelers across the United States. The partnership provides advertisers with access to more than 293 million passengers in major airports throughout the United States, and it should make crisscrossing airports a bit more pleasurable.


According to the company's research, paid networks only see around 1 percent of people actually connect to the Internet, whereas a typical free network has, on average, more than 10 times the number of users consuming over 20 times the bandwidth. Major airports including San Francisco, Los Angeles International, Minneapolis and Baltimore-Washington have recently made the transition, and hopefully your local airport will follow suit soon.