Palma’s Son Sant Joan airport is one of a dozen airports in Spain that now has free and unlimited wifi service. This was launched on Monday under an agreement between the airports authority Aena and Eurona Telecom that will run for two years with an option for it to be extended. In addition to Palma, the airports of Madrid, Barcelona, Malaga, Tenerife South and Tenerife North, Lanzarote, Las Palmas, Fuerteventura, A Coruña, Vigo and Santiago de Compostela also now have the service.
Until now there had been thirty minutes of free wifi. With the introduction of the new service, the contract value for which has not been disclosed but which is to be financed through advertising, some 200 million passengers per year will be able to make use of it. In addition to the free service, there is also a premium one that can be paid for. The price of the previous pay system that Aena operated was reduced to 1.50 euros per hour last December, when the authority also doubled the amount of free time.
The premium service, which will not have advertising, will now cost a minimum of five euros a day (applicable in the whole airport network), and it will have greater speed - between three and ten megas - than the free service, which will be a basic one of up to two megas.
The level of wifi use under the previous scheme rose significantly in 2014: by over 80% at Madrid airport, for example. The new scheme with Eurona, which will see the whole of the airport network covered by the end of the year, makes the telecoms company the first in the world to be the lead manager for wifi across a whole network.