As a pseudo-update to my astonishment at the cost of wireless network access in the Orange County Convention Center, I heard an even better story from another participant in the conference. She represents a small publisher, and had reserved a tiny room in the main conference hotel in which she could meet with all her authors and hammer out their business for the year. She asked the hotel to activate the in-room network access, and was quoted the price of $1,200 a day — that’s not a typo. The same hotel offered building-wide access to guests for $8 a day, so she just asked one of her authors who was staying at the hotel to activate their access and used that.

$1,200 a day?!? Seriously, for that daily price, you could get two T1 lines run to the location of your choosing and pay the monthly cost of the lines. That’s simply insane.