Skype offering free airport WiFi to Mac, PC and iOS over the holidays

By Jeff Hughes December 19, 2011

Skype says it wants to make travelers’ lives easier over the holidays and has announced a free WiFi deal with certain airports. If you find yourself stuck in one of the 50+ participating airports’ terminals over the holidays, you’ll be able to tap into a free hour of Internet access at a third party wireless hotspot, courtesy of the Microsoft-acquired VoIP service.

The date for the free WiFi offer begins Wednesday, December 21 and ends December 27. Skype video and voice calls will be free and available to those with either a PC, Mac or iOS devices. It doesn’t seem as if those with Android, Blackberry or Windows Phone devices will get to access the offer.

To participate in the WiFi bounty, you’ll need to have the latest version of Skype for Windows or Mac, or have downloaded the Skype WiFi app for the iPad or iPhone. Sign in to your account and verify that the location is correct; if it’s not, Skype WiFi charges by the minute. Only one hour is free, but that may be the pleasant distraction needed during this stressful season. Major airports like JFK and the San Francisco International Airport are on the list; check with Skype to see if your airport is participating.

Skype’s holiday message? Love and family: “The holidays are all about connecting with those you love. Skype is helping people maintain these meaningful connections this holiday season from wherever they may be,” said Skype product marketing director, Linda Summers.

The company is picking up the Google slack this season. Google has in the past provided free wireless to many weary travelers stuck in airports around this time, though it seems as if Santa’s taking a break this year. Aside from the free offer, the Skype Credit powered WiFi program allows users Internet access at over 1 million WiFi hotspots globally.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

I'm a SF Bay Area-based writer/ninja that loves anything geek, tech, comic, social media or gaming-related.

Mobile

The Gmail iOS app is finally getting a much more useful widget

New Gmail widget on iPhone.

As far as widgets go, Google’s iOS apps have always left something to be desired, but it looks that’s about to change as the search giant has announce plans to bring the widget for its iOS app on par with the Android experience.

Although widgets only came to the iPhone with last year’s release of iOS 14, most app developers came up with some pretty creative ways to make use of the new widgets. Not Google, though, which gave Gmail a widget that was basically just a collection of shortcut buttons that didn’t display any particularly useful information beyond the number of unread messages sitting in your inbox.

Mobile

How to use Apple’s iMessage on iOS 14

how to use iMessage

Back at the release of iOS 10, Apple completely revamped iMessage, transforming the platform from a simple SMS replacement to a feature-packed messaging experience. Now we're into iOS 14.1, and we love how iMessages has matured over the last few years. But do you know how to access all the cool features?

We bet not -- for example, did you know you can now pin up to nine conversations at the top of the screen by swiping left to right on the conversation, complete with amusing animations when you get a text? How about all-new threaded replies, mentions, and muting in group conversations so you can communicate effectively without getting overwhelmed by messages, plus new custom group names and images? If you think Mac users got left out of this update, think again; in addition to every feature mentioned above through an app designed around Catalyst, iMac 14.1 also provides PC owners with Memoji and other message effects.

Mobile

Google Pixel 5 vs. iPhone 11: Should you buy Android’s best or iOS’s finest?

Google Pixel 5 Front

The Google Pixel 5 is very much a Google flagship smartphone. Lacking some of the bells and whistles of more expensive phones by Samsung or Apple, it nonetheless gets the fundamentals spot-on. Its camera is unsurprisingly excellent, and it comes with very slick software, a sharp touchscreen, 5G support, and also a much bigger battery (compared to the Pixel 4). It's also priced at a reasonable $700, making it a direct competitor to last year's iPhone 11, which also begins at $699.

However, which phone is better: The Pixel 5 or iPhone 11? We pit the two devices against each other in a head-to-head, looking at how they compare in a number of categories. This should tell you all you need to know about the two smartphones.
Specs