Wi-Fi in San Antonio

Dave Winet had inquired about WiFi connections at the TESOL convention this week in San Antonio.  I sent him the following reply: 

"

First of all, I hope you will join us sometime on Wednesday night for the Fiesta.  We should be at the Houston Street Bistro until 10:00CST/04:00GMT (or at least some of us will), and we would be honored by your presence.

In my efforts to find a suitable place to set up a WiFi connection suitable for this meeting, I had occasion to look into potential sites all over downtown San Antonio.  San Antonio and Austin, Texas are a little more than 60 miles apart physically, but electronically or at least in terms of WiFi connections, they are worlds apart. Austin has a huge community of users who have literally put Austin on the map in terms of WiFi use.  San Antonio, on the other hand seems to be having some difficulty figuring out what WiFi is and whether or not they have it, and if they have it, how many body parts they are going to charge you for using it.

First, I want to express my frustration at the City of San Antonio.  San Antonio is the eighth largest city in the US, and I found it very difficult to find anyone in the city offices directory who could actually tell me where the best WiFi internet access was and even then, I got the impression that although the gentleman found answers to my questions, that my queries were sort of put to an "informal office vote" as to whether a locale had WiFi access and especially as to whether such access was free or not. 

Even when I found someone helpful, I had problems.  The young law student at Cranford WiFi, understood what I was looking for but he was very difficult to catch at home and offered to send me a list of the best WiFi restaurants in San Antonio, but said list never arrived and I never got a call back.  I made several calls to him, and instead wound up talking to his wife, who had apparently took my messages and sought answers from him, because the next time I called back she would pretty much have an answer for me.  They both warned me that both the Convention Center and the Marriott Hotels had fairly expensive hookups.  Their site : http://www.geocities.com/cranjoford/wifi.html was one of the best sources of information, and again, I don't want to diminish the mistakes they made, but instead I'd rather believe that he was simply busy at school and that this side business was not his primary interest.  I really did appreciate his wife's attempt to answer my inquiries.  He also hosts a page of all free WiFi access in San Antonio, and at one point told me that we could host the Fiesta at his house since he had good WiFi for free http://www.freewebs.com/sawifi/freesahotspots.htm .

I also inquired at the Marriot River Walk convention information system about connections within the Marriot Hotels (there are but four of them on the river walk).  There appeared to be much confusion about what I was asking for, but I found that each individual room is supplied with free high speed internet access, and the common areas have WiFi connections.   I was told that none of the restaurants in the Hotels had WiFi, though that is a bit hard to believe (especially if the common areas are wired) and that the common areas have no places to hold a meeting or to eat.  Additionally, WiFi access in the common areas was rather costly.  I believe it was 20.00 plus dollars for the first hour and then over 3.00 per minute thereafter.  Maybe someone check this out while they are there.  You may want to look at this comment before you rely on Marriott for your connection: http://www.auscillate.com/wireless/san_antonio/index.php?which=27

I had also seen information that the old Market Square or El Mercado had free WiFi access.  The University of Texas at San Antonio is on one side of the square and it has WiFi.  A couple of the Restaurants on the Square also have WiFi, but when I called them to set up the Fiesta meeting, I was told that we had to eat there and after the meal we would have to leave.  I did not believe this would be appropriate for an extended get together.  It maybe that the WiFi from the University bleeds over into the Market Plaza but no one could  confirm that the out door common areas had WiFi or how much it might cost. 

Finally, a friend of mine suggested that I contact SBCGlobal telephone services since their primary office is in San Antonio.  SBC, it appears is rapidly expanding their services and WiFi and VOIP services are two areas that are growing rapidly for them.  I visited their website at http://www.auscillate.com/wireless/san_antonio/index.php?which=27  Their  service is called FreedomLink and is still in it's infancy.  However, since they are San Antonio based, there was a pretty good list of places where one could purchase a FreedomLink connection.  It was through their map of WiFi hotspots that I found the information about the Houston Street Bistro Restaurant where the Webhead Fiesta is to be held: http://olfsbc.pctel.com/OnlineLocationFinder .  I am still holding my judgment about SBC, but I found them helpful and pretty knowledgeable about the information I needed.

This is probably the most comprehensive list of WiFi hotspots in San Antonio.  Please note that under the Marriot River Walk Hotels there is a Deceptive Practices tag.

http://www.auscillate.com/wireless/san_antonio/

I hope this will help you in your quest to find a good source of WiFi at the TESOL convention.  If would please, let us know by going to the Webhead Fiesta blog and responding to this message. http://elderboblog.typepad.com/fiesta/  In fact, I encourage anyone with any knowledge gained from the TESOL conference to come back and post a response here so that future Webheads won't have as much difficulty as I did, finding suitable environs for a virtual meet-up.

elderbob

Comments

[Sus Nyrop]

http://www.kodak.com/US/en/corp/features/cowgirl/

Just wanted to share this Kodak page about cowgirls :-)

See ya tomorrow at the party.

Sus

[Sus]

HMMM, did not work last time, let's see if this comes out more correctly as a URL?