I’ve blogged before about the various airports offering ‘free WiFi’ to customers – this is generally a great service.

Chicago O’Hare is rolling out a new wireless service in the public concourses – run by Concourse Communications this is billed as ‘Wifi Zone – A Concourse Network’ – and the all important word ‘BETA’.

I’m in the United terminal; near gate C5 waiting to wait list to an earlier flight to Salt Lake City.

I’ve got ‘good’ signal on my wireless NIC; but the service sucks. It’s slow, unreliable, disconnects – I get better throughput via GPRS on my cellphone.

City of Chicago – while this is beta make sure it’s free! Concourse Communications – fix it – this is truly the worst public WiFi I’ve had to use in a long long time. I can’t believe people pay money for this. I’m certainly asking for a refund.

[As an aside – I’ve not had problems with T-Mobile Hotspots in the United Red Carpet Club lounges]