RV Having Fun Yet?

Back when Al Gore coined the phrase “information highway” — around the same time he discovered penicillin and split the atom, if memory serves — it's unlikely that even his powers of prognostication could have anticipated the metaphor someday accruing the ring of literal truth. But with Wi-Fi popping up inside automobiles, at truck stops (WR, June 2003) and in RV parks (um…the article you're currently reading), it now seems more and more like the nation's turnpikes and interstates are merely a conduit to travel from one wireless hot spot to the next.

While targeting the recreational vehicle demographic may seem at first like a stretch, in fact the wireless Internet is tailor-made for RVers' unique demands. Now road warriors can e-mail their grandchildren, pay their bills online or simply surf the Web from the comforts of their mobile home — assuming they can find an available Wi-Fi access point, of course. That's where RV parks come in.

“Our company was founded specifically to bring technology to solve problems in the campsite and RV industry,” said Alan Kobran, president and CEO of LinkSpot, a wireless Internet service provider based in Reston, Va. In June 2002, LinkSpot and transaction-oriented data solutions developer Transaction Network Services teamed to roll out Wi-Fi service in an RV site just outside of Washington, D.C.; within a year, the partners had 30 park rollouts under their collective belt.

“This industry is booming — ever since 9/11, people don't want to travel overseas, and we're also seeing a lot of baby boomers who want to spend more time with their kids,” Kobran said. “Over a million people in the U.S. live in their RVs full-time.” A recent University of Michigan study notes that RV ownership is at an all-time high — approximately one in 12 vehicle-owning households now has one, a 7.8% increase since 1999. And of the 7 million RV owners currently roaming the U.S., close to half keep a PC onboard.

“A lot of park owners are not high-tech guys, so we devised a system that fits their business model.” Kobran said. “Users come in with their Wi-Fi-enabled computer — they get information on the service, go back to their site and bring up their computer. It asks them to type in their credit card information, if they want to buy a day's service, and that's it.”

According to Kobran, LinkSpot signs up the parks, surveys each site and designs a network that fits the area's specific requirements. TNS provides the equipment, the access lines and the back-end monitoring. “Our main business is the dial-up network behind the vast majority of credit card transactions,” said Bill Thornton, director of business development for TNS' Telecom Services Division. “We're a merchant terminal. We own 85% of the credit card business, which accounts for 20 million transactions a day in the U.S. We felt it was important to take our unique expertise and apply it to the Wi-Fi space — it's a new way for us to make money, and for the hot spot operator to make some money as well.”

Kobran said that while a few park owners are giving the service away free, the standard cost is $5.95 per day, or $50 for a full month. “We're getting a lot of requests from people who say, ‘Tell us where else you are’ — they're basing their stay on whether the park provides service,” he said.

That's a big difference from the old days, when campers were most concerned with whether cartoon bears might conspire to steal their pic-a-nic baskets.