ANARCHY!

ANARCHY!

Yes! I am now officially never using a wireless hotspot again. Not unless I have a stupidly crazy business critical need to do so.

I am sat in the M&S Moto service station outside Reading (that’s pronounced “Redding” for our international users, not ‘Reading’ as in “I’m reading a book”). I am waiting for the ridiculous traffic on the M4 motorway to subside so I popped in here after leaving Vodafone to check email and fuel up.

Obviously I was planning on using a wireless hotspot. I took one look at the uninspiring Moto wireless offer (five quid for an hour) and the T-Mobile one and thought, “No.”

No. That’s it. No need. We move on. What IS the point of paying twenty quid a month or crazy prices per hour when you can get a 3 USB mobile broadband stick for a tenner a month? Or a Vodafone one for 15 quid a month?

The fact that these services now actually work reliably should most definitely encourage providers of wifi hotspots to seriously evaluate their business models. I most certainly am not smiling politely at the owners of this Moto service station for flogging WiFi at me and I won’t be going out of my way to drop off at any of their other properties unless I absolutely need to as a result.

There’s definitely still a market for professionally managed services — I’m thinking iPass or Boingo — and I am still holding on to my The Cloud hotspot service for the time being. But now, when I’m UK-based, I will most definitely be using mobile broadband.

I’ve been playing with WalkingHotspot. Does what it says on the tin. Works with Windows Mobile and Symbian devices.

Following on from my MISERABLE experience in Starbucks this morning where my US sodding WiFi account wouldn’t work, I have NO PLEASURE in reporting that T-Mobile UK WiFi reckons that an international mobile phone number looks like this:

00447940123456

I kid you not. I found this when I was signing up for a 24 hour pass (yes I was that annoyed and pissed off that I paid a tenner to get access. Getting up and walking out to the office was far too ridiculous a notion.)

Here’s the sign-up form:

Since when as an international mobile code included two zeros in front of it?

I typed in my number as 4477… and I got the confirmation text fine.

Goodness me.

Now and again, the T-Mobile hotspot service in Starbucks have saved my bacon. I can remember dashing down various suburban high streets in search of a Starbucks to get internet access to change or update something for a screaming client.

I decided to take a break today and go and work from a Starbucks. You know, see a bit of life, get some fresh air, enjoy sharing space with one’s fellow Earthlings.

I was brimming with confidence. OVER confidence, some might say. I picked a Starbucks on Oxford Street, safe in the knowledge that I had a US T-Mobile WiFi account and I’d be able to get immediate access. I went straight to the till and got a fresh (bottled) orange juice and went to find a comfortable chair.

The first problem is that T-Mobile’s US gateway isn’t working. I selected ‘T-Mobile US’ on the wifi welcome page and typed in my username and password.

Nothing.

Well, it spouted me an error. If I was in Glasgow, the page would have yelled ‘IT DOESNEY WORK’ at me rather strongly.

I tried again. Nope.

I made the international sign of ‘what a total arse’ and screamed a four letter expletive to myself. Short. Not a long yell, just a short expression of frustration.

Here I am, arsing about, relying on this international billion dollar company and they’re far too busy, clearly, sticking fingers in orifices and playing with themselves, to be bothered monitoring their systems to check they are WORKING.

I keep doing this. I keep making the mistake of RELYING on these type of companies. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.

I should have walked into the Starbucks thinking ‘Ah, yes, T-Mobile… heh… might work, let’s see, otherwise, you know, I’ll just have an Orange juice and stare at the wall.’

To add further insult, I was informed that, IF my US WiFi account was working (if their database connection was working, or whatever), that I’d be charged a ‘roaming fee’ of $0.18 per minute.

What?

I have no doubt that this is most certainly detailed in their ‘click here to read the terms and conditions’ that I most certainly didn’t bother reading. So fair play.

But not. Not fair play. I’ll pay it. I’d have paid it, if my account had worked, but it’s just not cricket.

You’re either an international company — T-Mobile UK looks VERY similar to T-Mobile USA — or you’re not. To be STUPID enough to charge your customers for ‘roaming’ on a WiFi connection when it belongs to the same PARENT company?

Well, I’ll tell you what. Screw you, with your fancy hyphen.

I’ll cancel my US hotspot account shortly.

The second problem is that, setting aside enjoying sharing space with one’s fellow Earthlings, you’re often exposed to total arses doing ‘meetings’ and ‘thought considerations’ (’it’s the new phrase for ‘brainstorming’ you see, politically correct’) the chap tells his colleagues as they sit down with their mochas and lattes.

The third problem: People with annoying mobile phones with ringtones set not at ‘LOUD’ but at ‘BLAST’.

So, excellent morning.

The sun is still shining. Very strange to find that in London.

I’m leaving San Francisco shortly to return to the delights of ridiculously fast internet in London.

You’d think that the City By The Bay — the biggest city in Silicon Valley — would have uber fast internet everywhere.

Unfortunately not. Not in the sodding Radisson at Fisherman’s Wharf. Don’t ever stay here if you’re wanting to use the shit slow internet.

I think I could probably run to the Google servers, somewhere in Mountain View and type in the search query and RUN back QUICKER than I could using LodgeNet’s StayOnline complimentary rubbish wifi.

I phoned their chaps yesterday and was assigned a ‘case’. Chap said he’d phone back with a resolution. 24 hours ago. Useless donkey speeds. Next.

So thank you but no thanks to Steve Berry, Ron Peterson, Larry Birnbaum, Mike Henderson, Sherry Mccaniess and Gwen Boyd, the Atlanta-based Executive Management team who, it seems, aren’t doing much in the way of executive managing at the moment.

Based on my experience, which I most sincerely hope isn’t repeated at other establishments offering StayOnline HighSnooze Speed Internet, the management team is professionally rubbish.

You’d think there’d be some sort of network quality check?

“Let me. Er. Let me… I’ll just… Er, Let me try and … OK…” says the support chap on the other end of the phone.

“Could you just reboot it. Or something? You know, make it quicker?” I ask.

“Let me… Er…. I’m just waiting.. er,” he never did, find ‘it’. He’s probably having the same trouble I am trying to connect to the box here.

They must have installed the cheapest connection — some 256k connection — into this place to get it to run this slow. Or the entire hotel and everyone in the North Beach area is using the connection.

I’ve tested with four different devices since Saturday to make sure I’m not seeing things, or getting bum results. Both the MacBook Pro, MacBook Air and an array of iPhones and other wifi capable devices find it ridiculously slow.

I did try and go to Starbucks to get a proper connection. Unfortunately it closed in the early evening. The staff began banging stuff together ‘washing up’ and putting away stuff after 7pm. That gave me the hint. I considered, for a moment, sitting with the Air, outside the store for little while. Stupid, though. So I came back to the hotel and spent the evening on snoozespeed.

I think it’s good for the character, to have a shit internet connection. It helps you appreciate:

- that there’s more to life than fast internet (Pffff, I’m not so sure)
- that the people are LodgeNet / StayOnline really don’t care much. It’s ‘complimentary’ meaning Radisson probably pay a fixed fee per month. Why bother getting out of bed for that kind of arrangement?
- that it’s really very difficult to work with a ‘cloud computing’ environment at 5k/sec throughput.

Next.

I took a photo of the little sign in my hotel room about the (ultra slow) internet connection:

They can’t even spell laptop correctly (first paragraph, 3rd line down).

I think, later on, I will phone that support line and see what they have to say for themselves.

The people behind it? LodgeNet. You’d think they’d be monitoring their service to see if it was performing, eh?

I breathe a sigh of relief, I can tell you, when I eventually find the proper Starbucks.

I have been without business critical internet since Saturday. Being a blogger more or less full time, I need to have internet to do business. And the slower the internet speed is, the slower I do business — and eventually, if the speed gets too slow, I pop.

I need the internet connection to work as fast as my mind is working. Otherwise I start tripping up.

“Ok, and I’ll link that to this address,” I think to myself in my mind as I’m busy authoring. Then I remember, “Shit, it’s a fooking slow connection, that’s going to take me, what, 60 seconds to eventually find the correct address? Screw it..” and I just publish, without the link.

It’s pretty bad.

It’s worse when you’re staying in a hotel that markets HIGH SPEED INTERNET ACCESS that, when you arrive, is nothing of the sort. Total unmitigated ARSE.

I’m staying in the Radisson Hotel at Fisherman’s Wharf. Mark this: It’s a fine hotel, the room is ok and the location brilliant if you’re a total consumer. But the internet is a piece of shit.

I popped down to reception this morning to try and use the internet there. I thought it might be quicker in reception. No dice. Still shit.

I asked the receptionist if there was anything she could do.

“Er,” she spoke, turning to the handyman chap who was luckily standing there.

“Ahh some kid is probably streaming something,” he explains to me.

“Right, well the kid’s been streaming it for two days solid, is there anything you can do, can you restart the router?” I ask.

“Errrrr,” the guys says.

“Ok, where has fast internet?” I ask. We’re past the ‘how can I make your stay more pleasant’ bollocks at this point. I just need fast interent. And worse, I can’t DO a search for wifi hotspots nearby because a) it takes SO long and b) the people who’ve compiled these hotspot databases haven’t thought to actually rate the connection speeds.

I notice there is a Hyatt across the road. I’ve already tried the Sheraton’s ibahn internet and found it woefully shit so I’m not taking a chance with another hotel chain’s “Fast Internet”, not unless I’m paying 500 smackers a night, in which case I would demand my own T1 connection installed that day.

The receptionist, showing an uncharacteristic bit of initiative spoke up, “There’s a Starbucks two blocks away?”

“Great,” I said, thinking just how shit does a hotel chain have to be to recommend that guests go to Starbucks to get a working internet connection.

I’m actually thankful so I go hunting for the Starbucks.

The first one I find is integrated into the Barnes and Noble bookstore. I sit down, open up the Airbook and hunt for hotspots. ATTWIFI! Ah yes! Remember, AT&T are replacing T-Mobile as the wifi supplier in Starbucks soon?

Brilliant. That’ll be fast, I think!

Bollocks to that.

ATTWIFI was a bunch of bananas. And no matter how much energy you get from eating a banana, it’s not 802.11x compatible.

Then I spied a real Starbucks across the road. I dashed over. I jaywalked. Screw waiting for the traffic lights. I’m a British Subject in need of internet.

I’m thinking about the large percentage of the audience at SMS Text News who are refreshing hourly.

Into the Starbucks, I sit down, don’t buy anything — screw that — I’m PAYING for internet access, that’s enough. There’s an ATTWIFI signal. I log on. Useless. It’s creeping along, it can’t even display the sodding welcome page banners.

Oh dear.

I then have a look at the other hotspots and find a ‘TMOBILE’ one. Strange to have ATTWIFI and TMOBILE sharing. But fine. I try T-Mobile.

It works.

It’s fast.

Fine. I’ll sleep here then.

I’m in a hotel — the Radisson at Fisherman’s Wharf — in San Francisco at the moment. On the web, when I booked it, it said ‘complimentary WiFi’.

The internet is, indeed, complimentary. It’s a good signal too.

But it’s shit-slow. Ultra shit slow. 10k/second throughput. I get a better signal from my Vodafone USB mobile broadband modem, but I am trying not to use it because there’s a hefty bill, I’m sure, waiting for me.

I’m living in the now generation. That is, I don’t bother downloading any email. I have it all stored on Google Apps. It doesn’t matter what computer I use to access it.

I do need to have a fairly decent internet connection in order for Google Mail to be usable though. I’ve used Google Mail on a bluetooth GPRS connection before and it is slow but usable. On this WiFi connection it’s appalling.

I thought of phoning the ‘StayOnline’ (”high speed internet access”?) support line to complain. What’s the point though?

I’m getting to the point that with my business, I need to have ultra fast internet. Not hamster-speed.

Whaddya do? When you’re on the road? I can’t be arsing about with the hotel internet connection lottery.

In the Las Vegas Planet Hollywood hotel, where I stayed for CTIA, I was getting between 1 and 2 megabytes per second download speed.

Fooking annoying.

Just like the hotel’s star rating, it’s internet connection should be rated too.

I notice that everyone and their dog in the mainstream media is getting stuck into British Airways and their teething troubles at their all new Terminal 5 (Greenpeace were there, live yesterday).  Well while that’s going on, I bring you news, courtesy of StrategyEye, that they’re offering free WiFi via BT Openzone in the 6 BA lounges at Terminal 5 (and at another 19 BA lounges across the UK).

Alas you’ll probably need to be a business class passenger, or one of those lucky people with a BA travel card — to get in to the lounge and actually use the facilities.  Smart.  I’d like to see BT look at other ways of financing their WiFi infrastructure.  I’d much rather pay them a tenner a month, like I do with T-Mobile WiFi or The Cloud, rather than a per minute fee.

Anyway next time you find yourself in a British Airways lounge in the UK, try out BT Openworld and write me an email from it?

I am, incidentally, flying British Airways to Los Angeles tomorrow. 10am flight.  6am start.  Even though I’m a stone’s throw from the Heathrow Express.  I’m hoping I’m not sitting next to any a) screaming children and b) exceedingly large people who should really have bought two seats.  And thankfully, BA don’t operate an onboard mobile phone service (as yet) so there should be a degree of peace and quiet.

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.

The chaps at Moovera have been busy. Very busy. Fresh from kitting out services for both Stagecoach (Oxford to London) and National Express (Cambridge to London) with WiFi, they’ve just gone live with free WiFi on the First Cymru Shuttle100 bus service between Swansea and Cardiff.

Kudos to First Group, the owners of First Cymru, for introducing the facility at no charge to customers. The 42 mile Swansea/Cardiff route takes about an hour, on average so I am confident that quite a few passengers will leap at the chance to check their email or knock about on the internet during the journey. If I found myself having to travel this route, I’d certainly be more interested in taking a First Cymru bus, rather than other transport alternatives as a result of this new offering. Anyone contemplating having a meeting in either city would do well to take along their laptop for the ride.

Justin Davies, MD of First Cymru, has posted this on their news page:

We now have fitted WiFi equipment to coaches working on the Swansea to Cardiff ‘Shuttle100′ service. We have invested £10K in the new technology which means that you will be able to browse your favourite web sites and check emails free of charge whilst travelling on the coach. We are the first operator in Wales to adopt this technology across a dedicated route and fleet of coaches. The service runs between the two cities up to 16 times a day on weekdays, and hourly on Sundays, offering value for money fares. Shuttle100 also serves Bridgend Designer Outlet. Remember, you can buy your Shuttle ticket on local buses in Swansea, so that your journey to the Quadrant Bus Station is free.

I think it’s a smart decision by First Cymru. The case study (pdf link) on Moovera’s site about the Stagecoach implementation reports that during the first six months of operation, 8,500 unique users accessed the on-Bus WiFi over 40,000 times.

It’s ye olde Big Red — Vodafone — behind the First Cymru (and Stagecoach) services and T-Mobile behind the National Express service (pdf link).

I’ve never actually been to Wales — not once, which is, I think, a sad state of affairs. If time permits, I will get over to Cardiff and check out the First Cymru on-board WiFi service. Has anyone come across similar ‘on-bus’ (or train) services around the world? (I had a look on Greyhound.com but didn’t see any references to on-board WiFi)

Writing this, I was also reminded of BlackAdder’s advice on Wales, perhaps rendered obsolete if you can use your laptop or mobile to look up google maps on-board:

“Never ask for directions in Wales, Baldrick. You’ll be washing spit off your face for a fortnight.”

My grandmother lives in Renfrew, Scotland.

Renfrew is distinguished not only by a huge amount of history and a lot of ye olde Scottish architecture, but also by the fact that it’s the nearest ‘town’ for Glasgow Airport. Renfrew, more or less, *is* Glasgow Airport.

So this makes visiting Gran relatively straight forward, provided you can get a flight into Glasgow.

And all the more efficient too, with news that Proxim and their Paisley-based integrator, CXS, has knocked up a wireless network covering the town. In fact it stretches 12 kilometers, which covers around 2,600 households and, provided my Renfrew geography is still accurate, one of them is Gran’s place. I shall have to check for a WiFi signal the next time I’m up. It’s all part of a Digital Inclusion Project implemented by Renfrewshire Council.

Here’s the meat from the release:

Renfrewshire Council was looking for a sustainable solution to provide citizens with residential high speed broadband. The programme, called Digital Inclusion Project, was designed to cover an area of around 5 square kilometers. Responses to the council’s tender included broadband vendors offering hard-wired solutions. CXS, however, put forward a proposal for a wireless solution, which was 1/10th the cost of hard-wired solutions. Having reviewed proposals, the council decided to work with CXS due to the
economic advantages of the wireless solution compared to fixed line proposals suggested by other vendors.

The implementation called for a large and robust network. CXS delivered by using 70 Proxim AP-4000MRs to cover over 2,600 households and 25 point-to-point and point-to-multipoint links (utilizing 40 Proxim Tsunami MP.11s) for backhaul to a 30Mbps internet ‘pipe’. The 30Mbps wireless backhaul extends over 12 kilometers from Johnstone in Renfrewshire to Shortroods at Glasgow Airport.

So strictly speaking, Gran won’t be connecting at 30 meg a second. Actually, she won’t be connecting at all, if I’m honest. I think she’s quite content with television. Although it might make the possibility of getting her a wireless Flickr-powered photo frame a reality. However I imagine residents in the signal area should get a pretty decent service.

Do you remember back in October last year, Starbucks tested free WiFi in 1,000 Starbucks across California? (Here’s our coverage of that)

Well, I was gratified to read that AT&T customers are to get free WiFI at Starbucks across America later this year. I suspected that this will be a crowd-pleaser for Apple iPhone users (in particular) — similar to the WiFi roaming arrangement that o2 UK has in place with UK hotspot provider, The Cloud. Wherever you go with The Cloud signal, your iPhone automatically roams.

I’ve always thought that charging for WiFi totally sucks in any restaurant or coffee shop. I understand there’s commercial realities at play, however I view WiFi as a necessary utility, much like I view working chairs and products made with clean water, at any coffee shop. Starbucks inability or unwillingness to sort out free WiFi has always niggled me. They’ve had free WiFi in Egyptian Starbucks for ages (so reports reader, Steve - see comments). I wonder why they’ve not implemented similar in what I imagine is their biggest market?

Perhaps the chairs in Starbucks are at a premium anyway? Perhaps their trials indicate that folk hang around too long, crowding the (sometimes tiny) shop floor space? I’d be mildly interested to get a look at the terms of the agreement between AT&T and Starbucks. I wonder who’s paying who.

As for the T-Mobile customers left out in the cold? Fear not. Engadget reports that T-Mobile has struck a five year roaming agreement with AT&T so it’s customers can continue to use the Starbucks wireless. So if you’re currently paying almost $30 a month to roam on all T-Mobile’s wireless hotspots, you’ll still be able to use the service for years to come.

And, in five years time, (2013) I hope we’ll all be walking about with $7/month unlimited 100meg/sec data connections with 100% coverage, so this kind of service will be irrelevant. Who knows… it could happen!

If you’re in the UK, sit down, shut up and keep paying for your Starbucks WiFi like the willing customer that you are.

With Orb running up to 5 million users, I wanted to give you an idea of why so many are starting to realize the value in media being served from the cloud, such as Orb does, versus locally stored data. I’ve been an Orb, er, member for a long time, but never quite got it to work. The problem was I was attempting to use AT&T’s EDGE network, which simply isn’t suitable for streaming video content. However, when I got my Nokia N95-3, which supports AT&T’s 3G HSDPA network, I decided to give it another go, and I’m completely floored.

The problem, currently, with locally stored video content, is the need for conversion. An .AVI movie file of say, The Princess Bride, is 713MB. Even if my mobile device was able to play that natively, that’s quite a bit of memory to suck up. So, to play it on my N95, for instance, I would need to convert it using something like Smartmovie or Divx Converter, which shrinks it down to a more manageable 70-80MB, without losing video quality. The problem is that now I have 2 copies of my movie - one for the PC and one for my mobile. I can’t really only convert what I want, when I want it, because that takes time.

This is where services such as Orb really start to shine. I have all of Season 3 of The Office (the U.S. one, sorry Brits). I want the convenience of being able to watch The Office on either my PC, N810 Internet Tablet, or N95, on demand, at any given moment. Even if I’m at home, Orb makes that simple and efficient by converting on the fly.

In fact, I often use Orb to stream video to my N810 while I’m cooking in the kitchen. I have full access to my entire video library, without having to convert anything, or worry about having enough space on my memory card.

The limitations, however, are obviously the internet connection requirement. If I’m disconnected, so is my media. However, as airlines are starting to add WiFi access to their features list, how much longer will there be completely disconnected places?

Are you finding it better to locally store video content on your device, after having converted it, or do you think that soon enough it will all be served from the cloud?

Devicescape just announced the availability of v2.0 of its hotspot managing application for Windows computers and S60v3 handsets, with a Windows Mobile version coming soon. Devicescape is a free service and application that helps you discreetly manage hotspots. It features a web interface, so that you can enter your known hotspots in advance (including protected ones such as T-Mobile’s HotSpots or other commercial hotspot network). This update also enables the application to automatically connect to free and open hotspots, making it even easier for consumers to use.

There is also a buddy feature that allows you to send your friends access to your hotspots without sharing the password with them. Part of the announcement today was also the availability of a developer’s SDK, making it simple for device manufacturers to incorporate Devicescape into their products and enabling users to have a superior WiFi experience.

You can download Devicescape for your Windows-powered laptop here, or get the S60v3 version here.

Continental Airlines, the 5th largest in the U.S., announced recently a partnership with LiveTV to offer inflight email and IM capabilities to passengers by January 2009. Set to be added to its fleet of Boeing 737 aircraft, the service will be free to all passengers and available on laptops as well as WiFi-enabled smartphones. They will also be offering 36 channels from DirectTV’s satellite TV lineup, free for everyone but Economy class, who pays $6 for the privilege.

According to the press release, the IM seems to be limited to Blackberry messenger and Yahoo! messenger protocols, though I’m not quite sure how or why. In any case, I’m all for internet connectivity on airlines, just not voice.

We’re a bit late on this one, but Ads for Access provider JiWire announced recently that its members are now offering access to the ad-supported WiFi network to owners of the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch devices. JiWire’s service is focused on affluent tech leaders and allows them to target specific devices such as the iPhone and iPod Touch for targeted ads. HBO and Charles Schwab will be initial sponsors.

The service is available at select hotspots within JiWire’s network of over 10,000, including major airports such as New York’s JFK and LaGuardia, as well as O’Hare International Airport in Chicago. Users will have the ability to use the free WiFi after viewing a JiWire-provided ad from one of its members.

Link: T-Mobile offers free Wi-Fi to subcribers — Netimperative

Mobile network operator T-Mobile is offering free access to a Wi-Fi network to its Web’n'walk subscribers.

As of today, the operator will give all new Web’n'walk mobile internet customers access to all T-Mobile Wi-Fi HotSpots at no extra charge.

For an extra £12.50 per month, on top of any Flext price plan, T-Mobile customers will now have access to both a 3G network nationwide, and what T-Mobile claims is the world’s largest Wi-Fi network.

This offers more than 39,000 Wi-Fi HotSpots across the globe (and 1200 HotSpots in the UK) including the Starbucks chain of coffee shops, airports and some rail services.

Well this is fantastic news. It’s about time.

I don’t know what it is with me.. I seem to be living in the future.

Witness my post on September 6th, 2006 — Getting rogered for 75p/min by T-Mobile HotSpot.

Fast forward 21 days to a survey by T-Mobile saying people want More access to Wi Fi.

The next month, T-Mobile announced unlimited usage of it’s Wi Fi network for a tenner a month for existing customers. This, I took advantage of. I’ve been a subscriber ever since.

I’ve not been that happy at having to pay T-Mobile even more cash for access to the internet, just because it’s via wireless internet as apposed to mobile data. If anything, I thought it should be much, much cheaper for T-Mobile to administer a network of wireless routers plugged into broadband sockets than it is to manage a huge range of base stations.

And well, there you go. Today - just over a year later, T-Mobile have made it free, provided you’re a 12.50/month Web’N'Walk subscriber.

Good news. I’m delighted!

Yeah, er, we don’t do WiMax any more. We’ll, er…, buy that service as needed, when, we, er, need it…

Link: undefined

Paul Saleh, acting Sprint CEO and chief financial officer, says the company is now looking at spinning off an investor-funded business to run the WiMax operations as a means of attracting capital to the venture and allowing Sprint to have a wider range of options, including increased focus on its mobile business.

As much as I’m annoyed by walking into a supposedly ‘The Cloud-WiFi’ connected pub in Hartlepool and finding no connection, I really have to say I’m continually delighted by the fact that The Cloud does, generally speaking, work. Very well. When I arrived at Liverpool Street Station, I was able to do that very geeky but rather satisfying sigh. It’s an internal sigh of relief, of connectivity. If you’re an ultra geek, I’m sure you’ll understand.

I flipped open the laptop and did a further sigh of relief when I saw the “WiFi Zone - The Cloud” SSID flash across the top of my screen as I connected.

I would like to avoid having to login every time, although their cookie (or, perhaps Safari’s own password ‘rememberer’) fills in my details automatically. I would like it if all my devices suddenly got wifi access when they came into a The Cloud zone — multiple mac addresses per account. That would be a useful addition.

I never made time to check out the T-Mobile WiFI service on the Heathrow Express before. Credit where it’s due. It works really, really well.

Even in the tunnels!

A new research study from Disruptive Analysis (from the blogosphere’s very own Dean Bubley) shows that evolution of mobile VoIP will rapidly eclipse voice over WiFi and become a mainstream form of communication.

The analyst firm predicts that the number of VoIPo3G users could grow from virtually zero in 2007 to over 250m by the end of 2012. This is comfortably in excess of the expected number of FMC users with dual-mode VoWLAN/cellular phones.

The key point, of course, is the word could. I can see that. I can also see it going quite a few other ways depending on how things pan out with the stratospheric shifts going on in the marketplace today. 2012 used to sound like a long time away when we were in the year 1999, but it’s only — what… 5 years away now?

The report demonstrates that it will be the operators themselves which will be mainly responsible for the push towards VoIP being carried over cellular networks. Carriers will become increasingly attracted to VoIPo3G because it will enable them to fit more phone calls into their scarce spectrum allocations, reduce operating expenses by combining fixed and mobile core networks, and launch new services like push-to-talk and voice-integrated “mashups”.

VoIPo3G also fits well with the move towards femtocells. Future generations of wireless technology – 3GPP LTE (Long Term Evolution), 3GPP2 UMB (Ultra Mobile Broadband), WiMAX – are “all-IP”, so unless mobile operators continue to run separate voice networks in parallel, they will inevitably transition to VoIP at some point.

What do you reckon?

\You can read more — and get more information on Disruptive Analysis at www.disruptive-analysis.com/.

I’d just introduced myself to a girl from Intel.

“I’m Ewan,” I said, “I’ll be your mobile blogger for this evening.”

I say that a lot. It’s a way of introducing myself and making it clear what I do and … well, it goes some way to explaining why I’m asking inane questions about your mobile handset choice later on in the evening.

I was at the Computing magazine awards last night and walking about saying hello to people, handing out business cards and searching for mobile related companies to blog.

The girl I’d just said hi to asked me ‘What do you know about WiMax?’

Arse.

‘Er, well…,’ I mumbled.

I’ve read widely on WiMax. But just, not, well, not recently and — I often like to wait until things are real and usable before getting stuck in.

‘It’s wireless internet over large areas,’ I said, attempting to look reasonably knowledgeable. The girl began an overview and it was all I could to avoid hearing the Intel bing-bing-bong-bing chime in my mind as she did so.

‘Kilometres,’ she said.

‘You what?’

‘It works over kilometres,’ she explained.

‘Ah right. But does it work? You know, work?’

‘Sorry?’ She asked. I was browsing the menu hoping not to see sodding Salmon. Award ceremonies in my experience always seem to feature sodding Salmon or some sort of sodding fishy thing.

‘Can I buy one?’ I asked, ‘Can I go to PC World and buy a WiMax kit and use it?’

‘Pretty much,’ she said, ‘The technology is excellent.’

Well I’d expect to hear that from Intel, I thought.

‘What, you mean I could get a WiMax router and plug it into my BT connection at home and start using it, right now?’

I think she was getting a bit fed up of my (stupid) questions. I qualified my idiot probings by explaining that I’d really not been paying too much attention to WiMax at all while folk jumped around trying to get it to work. I’d very much associated it with mesh-networks-and-all-that-jazz. You know, coming soon, sort of, in trial, sort of… not really ready…

Kudos to the girl though, she wasn’t giving up on me, ‘Yeah, you’d need a WiMax card for your laptop though,’ she continued.

‘Right, so, theoretically, I could get a WiMax router and card for my laptop and then I could sit in the cafe round the corner from my place and use MY internet connection?’

‘Yeah, exactly,’ she said, with no small amount of triumph that I’d eventually got it.

‘Could I, theoretically then, go to the gym — that’s about a block away — and check my mail on my laptop there?’

‘Yes!’

Wicked. Right. Sign me up.

I really should have paid more attention to WiMax. I’m certainly aware of the general limitations and arguments for and against the technology. It’s worth having a play with it though, which is exactly what I’m going to do.

I suddenly remembered reality: ‘Do you do WiMax cards for Apple laptops?’

‘I’m sure there’s one that’s compatible,’ she explained.

Right then. Standby. I’m going to get hold of a WiMax router and card for my laptop and I’m going to do it. I want to check my email and post a note on SMS Text News via *MY* connection at my local cafe whilst I wait for my two-poached-eggs-on-toast.

Update: Heh. I don’t know what I was smoking when I wrote this. Obviously, WiMax routers aren’t for sale in your average PC World…. at least, yet. Thank you Carlo for helping me press reset. I’m going to see what I can do to play around with WiMax here in the UK anyway.

Mike’s prediction looks to be coming true…

Link: The Raw Feed: Starbucks Tests Free Wi-Fi In California

Well, the prediction is happening… sort of. Starbucks is TESTING FREE WI-FI at some 1,000 Southern California stores (until October 31).

So this is quite interesting, particularly after I went absolutely nuts about a year ago when I realised just how much T-Mobile was charging, per minute, for access to WiFi in Starbucks stores.

I’ve since used my T-Mobile WiFi account (I added that to my monthly subscription a while ago) quite a few times to perform business-life-saving updates or edits when I’ve been on the road.

If you’re in California, perhaps you could pop into your nearest Starbucks and confirm if they’ve got free WiFi?

I suspect that free Starbucks WiFi will be a massive draw for passing and regular customers. That’s provide that folk don’t spend the whole afternoon hogging tables whilst working on WiFi and only buying one bottle of water…

Introducing free (inter)national WiFi in Starbucks would also change the dynamic on wireless devices. I can’t be arsed, for example, to configure my Nokia N95 to find the T-Mobile hotspot, then LOG ON to the access page and type my extremely long and annoying username and password assigned by the service. It would take a good five minutes of typing to do this. So I never bother using WiFi on my N95 — or my iPhone, for that matter, unless it’s free to use.

It’d also prompt a heck of a lot of other store chains to take a look at their pay-WiFi (or lack of WiFi) — e.g. McDonalds and BT Openzone here in the UK.

Just did a post on The Cloud wifi network and their stupid pay-more-per-MAC-address policy.

Only then did I realise that I’m paying £11.99 a month for my unlimited The Cloud subscription. The current price on their site is £9.99.

Right.

Thanks for letting me know…

They’re using that hugely outdated Worldpay system that appears set in stone. I think I’ll actually have to UNSUBSCRIBE and then RE-SUBSCRIBE if I want to take advantage of the current price. Crazy.

And stupid.

Verrrry stupid customer policies.

They’ve obviously all engineers at The Cloud, right?