Google's new broadband offer: 20-days of WiFi for a quid

Google is trying another tactic to get more of the developing world online, this time with a WiFi Passport service allowing Android users in the Indonesian capital Jakarta to bypass busy 3G networks. To access the service, dubbed WiFi Passport, users will need to be running Android 2.2 and above. After downloading an app from …

[Ketlan]

Hmm...

It's difficult to know what how to respond to news of this nature. On the one hand, it's great that the developing world is being opened up in this way but, on the other, it's Google doing it. One can't help but be suspicious of the motives involved here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Rest easy

No need to be suspicious. Google is a business not a charity. Their motive is obvious. The more people online the more eyeballs they can sell to advertisers.

[ratfox]

Must be the NSA

Google would lose money on the deal, so the NSA is paying for it in order to use it to spy on the international deals going on in Singapore…

And the barges are also controlled by the NSA, the Google thing is just a smokescreen!

[JamesTQuirk]

Re: Must be the NSA

OR Google's (w/ AMAZON, Facebook, Twitter etc ) needs are to get more "bums on their seats" using the expensive networks they keep installing, all around the planet, More people giving a couple a bucks a day, Don't worry they will own the worlds telecommunication networks before long, it will be easy then, NO CHOICE ......

and the NSA helps fund DATA collection services, Know anyone good at that ?

[Fihart]

Re: Must be the NSA @ratfox

You may have been joking about the barges, but you have a good point.

Consider the British Ordnance Survey maps.

Note the word Ordnance.

Google Streetview would certainly make it easier for troops to fight street to street in urban combat.

[CadentOrange]

Re: Must be the NSA @ratfox

A corollary of this is that you must ensure your opponents are using Apple's Maps. That's totally tilt things in your favour.

[JamesTQuirk]

Re: Must be the NSA @ratfox

When stored on Google/dropbox etc cloud drive ? With VPN & Clouds, Onion/Tor, who knows what/where/when ? It could be a mutant star goat aproaching from venus, I have heard they are dangerous ....

[Martin H Watson]

Just back from a holiday in Croatia's second city, Split. I couldn't believe how many free hotspots there are in a country only twenty years out of a civil war.

[Oh Homer]

[Winks seductively at Google]

I live in the middle of a muddy field surrounded by sheep. My nearest mobile cell tower is 20 miles away, hidden behind several large hills and a tractor, and my "broadband" operates at speeds roughly comparable to a 1980s fax machine. Apparently BT is scheduled to upgrade my exchange the year after my great grandchildren die of old age.

I believe this may qualify as third world conditions, even though I allegedly live in a modern, civilised country, so is there any chance you could gigify my Internets, thus allowing me to join the rest of the 21st century, stream pr0n at acceptable speeds, and other such essential activities?

If you do this favour for me, I promise to be your bitch forever.

Love, Homer.

[JamesTQuirk]

Re: [Winks seductively at Google]

Have you thought ASC(II) graphics, apparently there's a drought in design, but it easy to transmit over your connection, I used to do on Viatel, you could a be internet asc(II) sensation and force Google to your Door !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

>7GB over a week and 10GB over 30 days, Google said.

How the hell does that work?

We're eing screwed, I see.