Wi-Fi Hotspots Explored
In our December 2009 show, Show 46, we looked at the various options for getting a wireless connection using a Hotspot.
On this page, you'll find a link to the show and a full transcript.
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Listen to FrequencyCast Show 46 - Wireless Hotspots Explained
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Transcript of FrequencyCast's wi-fi Hotspots focus:
Carl :
What are we focusing in on today?
Pete:
Today we're talking wireless hot spots.
Carl:
Wireless hot spots? - very nice, didn't we do something on this before?
Pete:
Yeah, about five or six shows ago, we talked about mobile internet, and how to get the internet over a mobile phone connection using those little dongles.
Carl:
I remember that - so what have you got for me now?
Pete:
Well, that's a semi-expensive way of actually getting an internet connection, you have to have a dongle, which has a SIM card in it, and uses the mobile phone network. Now, that can be quite pricey, and it can be a little trickier to set up, so why not get something that's cheaper and faster and a little bit easier?
Carl:
Sounds good to me, so what have you got?
Pete:
Well, these are these hotspots, so if you go to a coffee shop or a restaurant or a hotel or an airport, you may find you get free Wi-Fi using a hotspot.
Carl:
Oh, I think I know what you mean - the little Wi-Fi sign on the front door on those burger bars, you know, the one where you have to go through the golden arches to get to them, and those sort of planetary coffee bars out in the galaxy?
Pete:
You do realise, we're not the BBC, and we are allowed to advertise, so we can say McDonald's, and we are allowed to say Starbucks?
Carl:
I was actually talking about Burger King and Costa Coffee.
Pete:
I just fancy a wappuccino actually.
Carl:
Sorry, what's that?
Pete:
So yes ...
Carl:
Latte?
Pete:
So yes, there are a number of wireless hotspot providers, the biggest one is probably BT Openzone.
Carl:
Right, OK - so I guess they've got a logo of their own, have they?
Pete:
Yeah, there is a special BT Openzone logo that you need to look out for. Now, you'll find Openzones at Starbucks, there are 600 Starbucks that have got BT Openzone in; also places like Caffe Nero at RoadChef, which I think's probably Little Chef?
Carl:
Oh right, they changed their name, did they?
Pete:
I think Little Chef changed their name because it was sort of a fat guy that was the logo, and healthy eating, I think they've obviously gone with RoadChef.
Carl:
Is that politically correct, I mean "Little Chef" - is that like saying Dwarf, or Midget Chef, or something? I mean, I'm a little bit concerned here, you've gone from a fat bloke, and that's fattist, isn't it? What are we doing here?
Pete:
No idea. So yes, RoadChef, Hilton, Starbucks, Caffe Nero, are all BT Openzoned up.
Carl:
Oh, that's all right then.
Pete:
And BT Openzone claim to have half a million hotspots.
Carl:
What, you mean like - grills?
Pete:
Well you see, they use FON to extend their network as well.
Carl:
Isn't that something like you measure sound by, or something? No, this is FON, isn't it?
Pete:
FON, OK, yes, we did talk about this a little while ago, but it's worth just briefly touching on. So this is the Home Hub - you know our good friend, the BT Home Hub?
Carl:
Oh yeah.
Pete:
What you can do, if you have a Home Hub, is you can opt into BT FON, which basically makes your BT Home Hub become a free wireless access point that other BT FON users can also make use of.
Carl:
OK, that makes sense - and this is the one where you had that little map for the other day, isn't it? - so you can actually pinpoint who's got them?
Pete:
Yeah, let me just pass you the laptop screen there. So you can see, that is where I live, and actually I have a home hub at home at the moment, so I have my Home Hub there with a little blue dot.
Carl:
Oh, you've moved!
Pete:
If you look around me, how many hotspots are there?
Carl:
Oh, there's about 30, I would have thought?
Pete:
Which is actually quite a lot, so these are all BT Home Hub users that are prepared to share a tiny part of their bandwidth, so if I want to drive past one of these houses, I should be able to get a free wireless connection.
Carl:
Can I ask a question? - why are some of these dots bigger than others?
Pete:
It's a larger base, so there's two Hubs in that area.
Carl:
Oh I see - very clever, so actually, there's probably more than 30 there?
Pete:
Yeah, and that is a fairly small area, that's about ten streets by two streets there, you have 30 or 40 Hubs, which is actually quite a lot.
Carl:
Wow, impressive!
Pete:
So yeah, if you go with BT Openzone, you do get about half a million free hotspots in the UK, which is pretty good.
Carl:
Right.
Pete:
So if you've got a BT Home Hub, actually you've got access to around about half a million free wireless hotspots in the UK. If you don't have a Home Hub, you can still get to BT Openzone, it'll cost you £5 a month, which is cheaper than a lot of mobile contracts, and for that you get 500 minutes, or you can go on a pay-as-you-go basis, 15p a minute, for your wireless connection.
Carl:
OK. What other suggestions have you got though?
Pete:
Well, the other biggie is The Cloud.
Carl:
OK, there's a storm brewing, and let's hear it.
Pete:
So The Cloud are the big rivals to BT Openzone, they have their presence in McDonald's.
Carl:
They give out presents in McDonald's? - what, like free Happy Meals?
Pete:
Absolutely. So they have a slightly different offering, they are £6.99 a month, so that's £2 more than BT Openzone, but that is unlimited, so you're not limited down to 500 minutes, which is pretty good. That does limit you down though to one device, so it takes the MAC address from your laptop or your phone, and ties your account to that particular device. If you want multiple devices, you're talking a tenner a month.
Carl:
Right, OK. So any other options we should go with?
Pete:
Yeah, the other one worthy of a mention, the third one out there - T-Mobile, they have their own T-Zones all over the place, they're most commonly associated with trains though, Virgin have got them on a lot of their trains, and some of the East Anglia services have got ...
Carl:
T-Mobile logos up on their windows, yes, little stickers - I've seen them, I know them - like the Wi-Fi one, but it's T-Mobile, that's it.
Pete:
So yes, wireless on a train, again from your laptop via the likes of T-Mobile as well.
Carl:
So what I'm getting here is, depending on what sort of user you are, which service is more appropriate or applicable to you - ie, if you're a commuter on the train, and then you can get T-Mobile - is that right?
Pete:
Absolutely, yeah, I think if you're a McDonald's' addict, then The Cloud may well be for you; if you like your coffee, then Starbucks and Caffe Nero who are going with BT Openzones are good; and if you're a bit of a wandered, these half a million or so points for BT Openzone definitely worth considering, and of course a lot of train journeys, Heathrow Express, then you may want T-Mobile, of course.
Carl:
Fair enough. So how can you actually tell which is best for you? I mean, what if you're like a travelling salesman style thing, you're using the train to get from A to B, for example? - and you're using cafes, etc, and so forth to do business - it really, don't we need a sort of generic service that covers everyone?
Pete:
Well, that would be nice, there are a few roaming services that do let you do that. What I would say is, it's well worth having a look at a hotspot locator service on the web. My favourite is one called JiWire, which points out over 286,000 wireless hotspots, which is pretty good. I've got a page on my laptop here ... let me just task to that. So that's where we are now, and you can see - see that there?
Carl:
Oh yeah, I've got you.
Pete:
So you've got a list of all of the local hotspots, Google Maps there with the little logo, showing you where they all are.
Carl:
Nice.
Pete:
It tells you which provider you're with, it gives you the speed and the security settings. You can also rate how effective these wireless points are, which is quite nice.
Carl:
Oh that's good, so you can interact with this site, and actually give your own opinion as well?
Pete:
Absolutely. The other one worth a mention is totalhotspots.com, again Google Maps, and when you hover over one of these, it actually pops up all the services it offers, so the one nearest to us, let me just put the mouse over that ... so we've got The Cloud, BT Openzone, Nintendo, Skype, restaurant ... so yeah, it's quite a useful service.
Carl:
That's very good, and I see you've wapped your iPhone out whilst we've been going through that, or I've been looking at your website and stuff?
Pete:
Yeah, this is good, if you've got an iPhone from O2, you actually get both Cloud and BT Openzone, so you've pretty much covered all your bases with an iPhone, but there's a lovely little app on here called Wi-Fi Zone UK, and if I just start this up, this will detect where we are, based on our GPS signal and our cell bases, and give me a nice list of all of the hotspots with a map, so here we can see there's one 0.9 miles away, it's a Cloud, so this will say Cloud, Openzone, T-Mobile, and so on.
Carl:
Right, this is all very good - I've got a laptop, I'm in McDonald's - how safe is it? Is this going to be looked at by everyone in McDonald's? Do I have to share my burger and chips and my information?
Pete:
OK, so the way it works is, you turn up at your McDonald's or your Starbucks, open up your laptop, and you have to do a scan for wireless networks, and if there's one of these hotspots in range, you just simply connect to it, and you're on. What you do normally have to do is go to the web browser application, and try and hit a page, and it will load up an Openzone or a Cloud page asking you to log on. Once you've logged on, you're connected to the internet, and off you surf, but it isn't actually that secure. Now, there was a feature on the BBC a little while ago stating how insecure this actually is, and it's very easy for crooks to create a false wireless hotspot for you to log into, and then every time you type anything, they can capture what you're typing.
Carl:
That's not very good.
Pete:
So the advice is, be incredibly careful. A lot of people will go in and log on to something like Hotmail, of course they're then typing in their Hotmail or their Google Gmail passwords, which could in theory be intercepted, so do be very careful, and do be aware that you could have people snooping on your hotspot activities, which is not too good.
Carl:
So there's no way of securing it?
Pete:
There is one, which involves using a VPN, which is a little bit teccy for people to get set up, but you can find advice on the website for Openzone, Cloud and T-Mobile on how to set up a VPN. Now that is end-to-end secure, so if you are going to do anything from a wireless hotspot, investigate the VPN option.
Carl:
Can we put some information about that up on the website? Or shall we actually tell them that information?
Pete:
No, that's a good idea - we'll get some links on how to use VPN up on our show notes.
LINK: How to use a VPN - eHow Video
Carl:
OK then. Can't you have your own hotspot though?
Pete:
Yeah, a couple of shows back we talked about MiFi, which is this service which basically lets you carry a portable wireless hotspot with you. That's definitely worth a look, especially if you've got a couple of devices that you want to use, and it's basically a modem, has a SIM card in it, connects to the mobile phone network, and then makes itself your own personal wireless hotspot. They are pretty secure, and recently they've dropped the price...
Carl:
From?
Pete:
... it used to be £15 a month on 3, it's now £12 a month, for that you get a one GB allowance, or pay-as-you-go, again that price has dropped as well - £50 for the modem, £10 a GB. Get a MIFi from 3
Carl:
That's not bad - let's move on.
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