Who do you use for international WiFi?
I’ve just managed to make it through the Spanish sign-up for WiFi here in Barcelona Airport. Whilst I managed to get through it, I could have made everything that bit easier if I had an account with an international wifi service.
I’ve got an account with T-Mobile Wireless, BT Openzone, The Cloud WiFi… and I even have a Boingo Wireless one that I bought my mistake (I thought it was a few quid per month for unlimited wifi… it was, but for a mobile phone… woops, almost helpful, I need to cancel that…)
Wherever I go, I always seem to find a WiFi connection that DOESN’T include anyone I’ve subscribed to. How do you handle this? Who do you use?
iPass seem to be on a lot of WiFi networks I’ve used. Boingo too.
Vodafone ES had a sign-up option too. Sadly it was only Vodafone ES customers who could use WiFi. Gahhhh. No bright spark in Vodafone YOU KAY (”UK”) has thought to chat to the Spanish and sort out some kind of mutual WiFi roaming deal. I’m sure my USB mobile broadband dongle will work - last resort that, though.
BT Openzone was a bit hopeless. There it was, listed on the menu.
Actually, let’s modify that. BT Openzone was a piece of shit. Less than useful. I have two Openzone accounts. Is it Openzone or Openworld. Or Openreach?
Anyway, neither account would authenticate. Neither. Both are fine and working in the UK.
How USEFUL is that?
Next. Any recommendations gratefully received.
I use http://www.fon.com - as I share my WiFi, I can roam onto any other user’s WiFi. Depends on where you go, but there’s normally some coverage. Now that they’re partnered with BT, there should be even more.
Posted by Terence Eden on March 18th, 2008 at 8:33 pm.Heya, have you seen Whisher? They are offering per-minute WiFi at many locations, including Barcelona airport (I once had to use it and the welcome page for sign-up was awful, it took me longer than I had before the flight so I gave up eventually). Last I saw they were looking for testers and giving away some free vouchers, give it a whirl, it makes a change to pay only for the used minutes with no monthly fees (I have Boingo too).
Posted by Steve on March 18th, 2008 at 10:39 pm.I agree that BT Openxxxx is a disjointed, badly executed experience, that does nothing to make it easy. At Waterloo it’s only 802.11b FFS! And don’t get me started on the utterly crap per-session web login system they employ.
I’m sorry, but if the nation’s biggest ISP can’t sort something as simple as a wifi service they deserve to loose customers to other WISP’s or 3G.
/m
Posted by Mike on March 18th, 2008 at 11:32 pm.…and another thing: I’d never use public WiFi anyway now, after understanding just how easy it is to spoof the login page and then capture all your subsequent actions - esp. Credit card details. Unless you are using VPN for everything I’d be very afraid of public wifi.
Solution: buy a local data USIM and use a USB Modem, card or Joikuspot on a spare wifi device. N95 or E51 best as they are HSDPA. Have just spent a day travelling using just this combo with laptop & iPhone. Brilliant.
/m
Posted by Mike on March 18th, 2008 at 11:41 pm.I use boingo got a free month with my nokia N800 and its also priced in $ which is good at the moment
Posted by mark on March 19th, 2008 at 12:41 pm.While I was on holiday in the Sierra Navada mountains above the city of Granada in Spain, I found myself in desparate need of a wifi connection. I had to sort an email response for something that was important enough to warrant a phone call that disturbed my very well earned rest. The village of Lanjaron is very remote and I wasn’t hopeful of finding an unsecured network. In desparation, I fired up my laptop and wandered down the high street, hoping against hope that something would turn up. BINGO! It turned out that the local Post Office wifi network was good and strong and unsecured. Even better, it was directly opposite a very nice cafe. I’m not into war driving (is that what its called?) and I’m certainly not a hacker, but being a curious sort of chap I have take a sneeky “look see” when in the vacinity of other Spanish Post Offices - so far “every egg a chicken” as my old dad used to say.
Posted by Stuart Ashmore on March 19th, 2008 at 12:43 pm.