[freehunter]

making people pay for something they could provide themselves

They could. At the expense of everyone else around them.

You make it free, 'cos it's the Olympics and people need to communicate freely.

Go to a club on Thursday night (Thirsty Thursday) and try to have a conversation with your friend. The same thing happens with wifi. Considering the amount of wifi equipment used by the teams at the Olympics, I think it's more pragmatic for the IOC to heavily regulate the spectrum to be sure the coaches can do their job. When it's all said and done, the spirit of the Olympics is about the athletes, not the fans.

[user49598]

Making everyone pay isn't a solution, it's a business plan.

When I go out to a loud club I can still communicate and no one comes around telling me it's against the club rules to try to.

The Olympics would be nothing without our ability to communicate about them. IMHO that's one of the biggest failings of NBC this year. They're doing a horrible job of communicating the Olympics. Opening up the communication channels just brings more interest, more coverage and more excitement.

[prof_hobart]

True, but how many people (apart from journos, who are almost certainly going to already have a separate wifi network provided) really need to be using their laptops to communicate from within the Olympic site? If you want to tweet or whatever, the chances are that you'll already have a smartphone with you that you can do that from.

The NBC debacle is a big deal, and if I was American it would have a big impact on my enjoyment. But this is vastly different, and I'm not finding my enjoyment affected one bit by this ban (I doubt that I will be bothered when I'm down there next week either).

[Retric]

Considering how many people are visiting from foreign countries I would assume Skype or other video conferencing solutions to be vary popular.

[prof_hobart]

If you're coming from a foreign country, you've probably got a foreign phone/data contract, and probably don't want to be streaming huge amounts of data over it at roaming rates.