Here’s how to get free

signal at major global hub

This is where I was sitting when I wrote this post…on the cold marble floor outside the entrance to the BA Galleries oh-so-exclusive “club” for first class people only@!#*
See my laptop on the floor with the distinctive desktop image? © SGE, Inc.

ONE OF THE WORLD’S busiest airports, London Heathrow, must be the only major terminal of its size without free wifi!
Actually, it appears there is no public wifi access at all.
To my chagrin, I have been searching for an internet connection for about an hour, in the best way I know how: ask everyone who appears as if they might know.
After checking in for my flight to Stockholm, and rushing outside for a last smoke, as I was reentering Terminal 5 I stopped an official looking British Airways agent as she was walking, briskly, across the terminal.

“Is there anywhere in the airport I can get a wifi signal,” I asked, adding, “even if I have to pay for it?”
Initially her response was the same. But the look in my eyes must have been so woeful and my demeanor so pleasant, she suddenly pulled me closer and whispered in my ear:
“If you go sit outside the BA Galleries Lounge, (first and business class passengers only) just the other side of security, you may be able to pick up the signal,” she said, in my ear. Then: “The password is Budapest.”
There!
Take that, BA and LHR.
Now the entire world knows the secret!
I found the location, tested it on my phone and, Bingo! I was on.
The connection is spotty at best. It takes minutes for the rountrip to save this file.
It’s not ideal. The floor is cold and hard.I fired up the MacBook and here it is for all the world to see.
It is unconscionable that such an important crossroads of the world is still in the Dark Ages.
Most everyone I talked to was so apologetic … but that doesn’t help.
Well, I didn’t intend to do any live blogging, but this is just too irresistible.
Next time you pass through LHR – and to the thousands of others in the terminal with me right now – here’s the secret!