Annoying pair of articles about how all those airports that have gone to great trouble and expense to provide WiFi service are now capping off and restricting access to power outlets.
I’m sitting in Montreal’s Trudeau airport, and noticing what appears to me to be a new trend. Airports have been capping off the power outlets. Where have they all gone? It used to be that you could find a power outlet on a wall or a pillar at the gate, but not anymore. In recent weeks, I’ve traveled through Seattle, San Jose, Chicago O’Hare, Toronto, and Montreal. The plentiful power that laptop users used to depend on is virtually non-existent. Here in Montreal, I am sitting in a phone booth, because it has a power outlet for laptop users.
Insane. The aggregate power drain from laptops (and cell phone chargers) at airports is trivial compared to all the other power costs at an airport. I don’t expect outlets to be plopped in everywhere it’s convenient (I’d love it, and the cost at construction or renovation time would be minimal, but I don’t expect it), but capping them off to prevent “unauthorized use” or some such malarkey is just crazy death-wish time.
Of course, then there’s this little twist:
I got into a huge fight at London’s Luton airport a couple months ago when I was ordered to unplug my laptop because it presented a “fire hazard.” All the devices plugged into the outlets in the airport had to be “certified.” I asked about the laptop adapters for sale in the Dixon’s electronics shop beside me and was informed that they were certified, and I could plug back in if I bought a new adapter from them (imagine that — a £50 electricity tax in the form of a mandate to buy a new adapter!). I’d just spent £13 on WiFi, so I kept arguing, demanding that they give me a quote I could publish in a magazine column about their policy, and they relented — finally — when I pointed out that the people in the first-class lounge visible through the picture window had all plugged their laptops in.
Comments on the first article indicate the same thing’s going on at Heathrow.