If you travel for business, you almost certainly take a smartphone, tablet or laptop with you. Or, if you’re like me, you take all three. So, fast Wi-Fi on the road is a beautiful thing.

Here’s something you may not know: If you’re an internet services subscriber of Time-Warner, Comcast, Cablevision, Cox or BrightHouse, then you can use any one of their 150,000 + Wi-Fi hotspots nationwide. Even better, more are on the way. These hotspots are in airports, train stations, shopping malls, etc.

Are these companies doing this because they’re filled up with the milk of human kindness and just want to help people? Hah!

They’re offering these hotspots because they believe it gives them a competitive advantage in the marketplace, that customers (commercial or consumer) will sign up for their services instead of signing up with another cable company, in order to get the nationwide web of Wi-Fi coverage that comes with being a customer of this consortium.

For their customers, it’s great. The Wi-Fi connections are fast, more secure than a typical open connection, and their customers only have to sign in once. After the first time, the whole network remembers your device, no matter where you are in the country, so you never have to sign in again (unless you change your device).

Certainly something to think about when you’re deciding which cable provider to go with…