Reliable Wi-Fi Getting Easier To Find For A Price

With free wireless long gone, voyagers need a different approach to connectivity.

- Casey Conley

Starting in the mid-2000s, sailors and power voyagers could install a relatively simple Wi-fi system on their vessels to capture free Internet up to a mile away. Cruisers could anchor offshore and still find service from coastal cafes, marinas and even homes.

With few exceptions though, those days are long gone. Most home and business routers now require a password to connect. The popularity of wireless Internet has led to interference that diminishes the ability to receive a signal over longer distances, according to Dalton Williams, owner of the company Wi-fi for Boats.

It’s gotten to the point where Williams often uses cellular data aboard his 41-foot DeFever Easy Living, where he lives year round, rather than Wi-Fi.

“I have basically talked people out of buying my system now because I think they will be disappointed,” Williams said in a recent phone interview.

Although it’s rare to find an unlocked wireless router these days, new technologies have made Wi-fi available in millions of places across the U.S. Cable companies such as Time Warner, Comcast’s Xfinity Internet and Bright House Networks have created broad networks of hot spots offering download speeds that rival land based connections.

These hot spots are open to existing cable Internet subscribers and in many instances non-subscribers as well. Current customers can log on for free, although non-users can pay for access in increments ranging from an hour to a month depending on the company. Time Warner and Xfinity, for instance, both offer “Access Pass” connections to nonsubscribers.