I'm thinking of signing up for T-Mobile HotSpot service to try it out. Since I'll be traveling, this will give me (hopefully) good Internet access at San Jose airport (I'm flying American, which is listed) and a few other random places.
Anyone have much experience with the service?
One thing worries me. At JFK they only appear to service the "admirals club" and not the general terminals. How lame is that? Anyone know if you can sniff the service outside the club(s)?
But hey, there's always the bookstores and coffee shops they service...
Posted by jzawodn at April 22, 2003 12:16 PM
Of course the question remains on how long American Airlines will remain listed, but that's probably beside the point.
SJC has Wayport for $6/day. I found that out, because flying home from the MySQL user's conference, my flight was delayed for 5 hours due to mechanical failure...At least I could get some work done!
I've had a TMobile account for a few months now (mostly at Starbucks on the east coast), and it's worked quite well for me. Power, pipe, coffee and a bathroom -- what's wrong with that? (Except for the Starbucks roast, but that's a given...) And it beats paying $10/day at the hotel to read your email when there's a starbucks down the block.
I've used Hotspots in two airports: SJC and DFW. I don't know how the base stations are provisioned, but the (east-coast) Starbucks have much better signon sites than the two airports I tried. It took about a minute for the airport sites to actually sign me on and assign an IP, while signons are instantaneous at Starbucks.
Also, the signon site is rather dainbread. You may want to use w3m to do the signon so signing on doesn't futz with your browser configuration (popups, resizing, yadda yadda).
Is the admiral's club encased in lead? I'd think that it would work otherwise :).
T-Mobile Wi-Fi at Starbucks is great. Faster than my SBC DSL.
I've been kinda wondering what's the point behind T-Mobile's Wi-Fi... Might just be where I live, but the area I usually haunt around town has at least 3 coffee shops within a 2 square mile radius, all with free wi-fi. There's a Borders Books down the block from one of them, with the T-Mobile Hotspot, but I usually buy a book or two then wander down the block for my free access and gallon of coffee.
I'm typing this on an iBook from a Starbucks. While my house has been under construction, T-Mobile Hotspot has been my primary means of connecting to the Internet, and I've logged at least 2-3 hours a day on the service for the past two months.
Recently, T-Mobile changed their pricing plan so there is no local/national distinction and they have eliminated download caps and airport surchages. Not a bad deal for $30 a month, if you're like me and you use it a lot.
I was at Dallas International today and the service works fine. If you're using it regularly, sign up for the $30/month feature. If not, $6 per use (up to an hour) is perfect for me.
How do I set up for t-mobile or any other such service?
Their instructions only talk about PCs
Help
I am a big fan of the T-Mobile service at Starbucks. It is very fast. Unfortunately, Starbucks has begun the process of installing breakfast ovens made by TurboChef. The ovens seem to obliterate the WiFi signal. T-Mobile knows about it but doesn't seem inclined to fix it.
T-mobile is the worst cell phone company that I have encountered. They have roaming with Cingular and AT&T, Both those companies have been sued for mesting up people services. T-Mobile reps are ass holes. I think Verizon is the #1 Cell Phone company right now.
