Photo: Erin Pettigrew, Flickr
Ah, the thrill of travel! The wind in your hair. The city skyline fading on the horizon behind you. The cell service bars disappearing at the top of your phone, from 3 to 2 to…uh oh. And just like that, the urgent hunt for free Wi-Fi begins. You may have to pay at the pump on a road trip, but with these tips and tricks, Wi-Fi won’t be the hidden cost that breaks your budget.
Read between the lines on your hotel’s website: Whether you book your stay directly through a hotel, via a travel company like Expedia or Priceline, or go the short term rental route through Airbnb, take a moment to read the way the available amenities are described. If your hotel’s website boasts lightning-fast free Wi-Fi or dedicated hotspots in every single room, you can trust that the company is confident in its offerings. But passages inviting you to access Wi-Fi in the business center or lobby should be a red flag about lackluster wireless internet in the building.
All 573 global Hyatt properties now offer free Wi-Fi (though the fact that each hotel also offers a paid premium Wi-Fi level surely speaks to the speed of the free service), and many other brands have committed to making free wireless internet a standard in 2016. Again, check with your hotel before booking just to make sure you’re safe.
Now read between the lines at hotels that aren’t yours: The laptop-gazing, co-working, latte-sipping scene at the Midtown Ace Hotel is practically legendary, and the Wi-Fi is always on and always free (the Stumptown coffee will cost you though). Do a bit of homework in advance about the go-to networking hotel in your destination city, and make a morning out of it before adventuring out for the day. For those who may feel a little too buttoned up to work alongside the Macbook-toting millennial crowd, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts recently announced that their Wi-Fi will be free for guests and pop-ins alike in nearly all hotel lobbies.
Fly jetBlue: No Gogo inflight internet monthly account? No problem. JetBlue recently announced that it will become the first American airline to equip its entire fleet with free Wi-Fi in the form of its own 20 mbps Fly-Fi satellite connection. Those speeds are akin to what many of us have at home, allowing passengers to access the same breadth of content they would on the couch. While 150 of jetBlue’s Airbus jets have already been outfitted with the Fly-Fi tech, the rest of the carrier’s vehicles will all come into compliance by Fall of 2016. So call ahead to inquire about your plane’s capabilities.
Virgin, too, is currently offering free onboard Wi-Fi to anyone with a Netflix account through March of 2016. But, but, but — signing up for a 30-day free Netflix trial will also gain you access to that precious wireless internet without dropping a penny.
Check Foursquare. Or better yet, 4sqwifi: Are there still people out there that don’t know to check Foursquare tips for Wi-Fi passwords, especially at airports and hotels? You may have to scroll through a few dozen sassy, “Try flying in a plane! It’s amazing!” tips before finding the treasure you seek, but all sorts of Wi-Fi login information is routinely planted in tips, just waiting to be plucked. Making the harvest even easier is 4sqwifi, a free iOS app that scrubs Foursquare’s API for Wi-Fi username and password data the world over.
Ask your cable provider for wireless access: Say what? This one seems counterintuitive, but several of the country’s largest cable providers enable their customers to access Wi-Fi hotspots far from home. Cablewifi.com allows Xfinity, Time Warner, Cox and other cable customers to find a hotspot using their home cable login information. The options range from sprawling to sparse from city to city, so take a moment to do your homework before embarking on your trip. Kansas City, for example, has nearly 3,000 free Cox hotspots, while regional neighbor St. Louis has none.
When time is limited, create more time: Plenty of free Wi-Fi connections you encounter on your travels are only free for a limited period, before asking for a credit card to continue accessing the sauce. But these trial periods aren’t necessarily tied to your device as much as your device’s MAC, or media access control address. Resetting your MAC address at the end of a trial period will usually allow to you reconnect to the Wi-Fi without a problem.
If you like the MAC address trick, try these 3 other Wi-Fi hacks as well.
When in doubt, bet on Starbucks and McDonald’s: Nearly all of Starbucks’ 21,000 global outposts and McDonald’s 35,000 locations offer free Wi-Fi. Other national brands giving the goose away for free include Apple Stores, Barnes & Noble, Denny’s, Dunkin Donuts, Krispy Kreme, Jiffy Lube, Lowes, Macy’s, Nordstrom, Taco Bell, Target and Whole Foods. LifeHacker has a list of additional brands with limited Wi-Fi offerings as well.