Rowell Personal December 7, 2022December 7, 2022

1 Minute

At 5:30 am, I was sitting at the Delta SkyClub in San Diego, an oasis away from the chaos of travel, sipping on a cold cup of orange juice observing half-asleep business travelers fighting for hot coffee while taking calls on their earbuds and wrangling their emails on their phones.

Delta often changes their Wi-Fi password, which is presented on a silver plaque, to a witty word of the week or season. And, as I write this, near to Christmas, they’ve chosen “gift”. 

On my iPhone, a portal presents itself, forcing you to type in the witty word of the day to finally open the gates to the World Wide Web. 

SkyClub entranceCan you spot the access point?

At this SkyClub, Cisco access points emanate signal where download speeds are exactly what we need in this TikTok consuming world. But for those busy business suits and their video conferencing, upload speeds leave you at the mercy of the Wi-Fi gods. 

An abysmal 0.12 Mbps keeps us at the gates. Throttling is commonly found in public areas such as airports. But at the airport lounge, I found it surprising. 

Everything is okay

ISP costs probably account for a large portion of operational costs which may be the reason for incredibly low uploads, or did I hit the wrong speed test server at the time, or maybe there were quite a few power business travelers uploading their latest PowerPoint slides. 

Ultimately, my experience using the SkyClub Wi-Fi wasn’t negatively impacted. The Wi-Fi did meet my personal requirements. Although, I was slightly inconvenienced with a splash page and went on to load my emails before heading to my departure gate to Atlanta.

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