BT eases iPad hotspot hop-ons

BT Home Broadband customers who happen to own an iPad can now log onto BT Wi-Fi hotspots with their broadband credentials. BT runs two Wi-Fi hotspot arrays: Openzone and Fon. Together they total more than 2m access points around the globe, the giant telco claimed. Many BT broadband customers can already use these hotspots for …

[Alex Johnson 1]

FON: Argh

I am not a BT customer and have no desire to become one, but I do get access to BT Openzone through the Cloud on my iPhone. I do not get access to FON. I'm fine with that: I'm not a customer so why should I. But, by using the same SSID, almost every time I walk past someone with a Home Hub I join that network, which of course I can't use, even while showing ome supposedly great connection. There's no way for me to tell the difference between "business" BT Openzone, and FON. While that may be great for BT it's really annoying for me, and does not make me thing warm and fuzzy thoughts about how they manage their network.

[Pen-y-gors]

But what about BT Biz?

Fair play to BT, free openzone/fon for Home users is a nice extra - but how about BT Business users? All we get is 250 Openzone minutes a month - and we pay more in the first place!

[xj25vm]

Title

Am I correct in thinking that all these wonderful hotspots BT is offering to their customers are in fact ADSL wireless routers they have already sold to their (other) customers and connections that they already charge for in the first place? Every BT wireless router automatically creates another BTFon or BTOpenZone wireless network as soon as you plug them in. If that is correct - and as far as I know it is - it seems like a rip off to me. I pay BT for broadband connection - and they are effectively raking money from both directions, allowing others to use my broadband connection through my router. Are they making it clear to their customers that they are sharing their bandwidth with other customers? Are they providing a clear choice to avoid sharing your connection? Are they giving some discounts to customers who accept having their broadband shared? I thought not. Oh well, it is BT after all. I wonder how long will it take for people to realise what's going on.

On the other hand - one can use their own router - and tell BT to shove it. It just strikes me as not a very "above the board" way of operating.

[Anonymous Coward]

Really?

Is that something genuinely useful for customers of BT from BT? This is THE BT we're talking about isn't it?

[Sandy Ritchie]

meh!

BTFon and Openzone has been around for ages for iphone.... and certainly around before 20th January for Android, I've had it since Christmas.

There was however an iTunes update yesterday, is this what your reporting? Maybe you could report if it works better than the old BTFon/Openzone app which would try to connect to FON on your home BT Internet network, and then give you restricted access (i.e. No access).

[Jacqui]

Hmm

Can someone confirm that this is not simply some dumb form filler but a secure authen based around keys.

Assuming it is a form filler, a wireless card into a PC and configure up a dummy FON/openzone gateway (with DNS, SSL certs etc) and anyone can filtch credentials?

[Anonymous Coward]

BT Ads

Anyone else sick of the BT ad for this service? Everyone has either an iphone or an ipad

Apple is not the only fruit

[Anonymous Coward]

"a wireless card into a PC " - or maybe even less

"a wireless card into a PC and configure up a dummy FON/openzone gateway (with DNS, SSL certs etc) and anyone can filtch credentials?"

It's BT. What are the chances it's done right? Zero, or nearly zero?

Anyway, who needs a PC, why not do it with one of those trendy new AndPod things or an iPAQ or whatever they're called these days...

Great new alternative to wardriving - warcommuting, and you get something worth having.