I think it's astounding that people are willing to pay for wifi usage. I could understand it to a certain degree for hotspots out of callboxes that cover outdoor streets, but the rates that are charged are absolutely criminal. There are plenty of free hotspots around glasgow in council areas like libraries and museum cafes, not to mention quite a few independent bars, cafes and similar.

Having recently taken delivery of a nokia internet tablet, I'm finding myself more carefully selecting my choice of venue for a lunchtime coffee. Perhaps if more people avoided the pay hotspots and went into places with free ones the rates might come down to something less shocking. The upside is the coffee is usually better (and cheaper!) in independent coffee places too.

That is quite possibly the coolest name that has ever been assigned to a humanoid creature. Zaphod Beeblebrox would have nothing on this guy.

I live in the 347th smallest town in Switzerland and the 3rd biggest town in Switzerland; and here free wifi extends to only ONE location (though if i sit on the Rhein and the ions are flowing right i can pick up on my flatrate voda.de card a flatrate voda.de 3G reception from across the border).

Otherwise i pay. Correction - my company pays.

Shit, i own my company.

(shrug)

One would have thought that web analytics companies would be able to offer a pricing structure based on actual usage.

Eg - 34,123 visitors will cost you £5,89

But no, they charge for packages of up to X amount of vistors/pageviews/whatever.

I don't think there is hope for humanity as a whole when this is the case.

either the humanoid behind the wheel is as drunk as i am, or the reg. vetting system is on a time delay ;)

This isn't America where free hotspots are in many hotels, libraries, office districts, malls, coffee shops (except Starbucks who charge of course).

In Britain it's mostly charged for, and worse you have to subscribe to dozens of services if you want to be able to roam about and get on any hotspot without hassle.

That they're a rip-off is no surprise when many are run ultimately by telecoms companies (BT, T-Mobile, etc).

sounds good. where can i sign up?

> There are plenty of free hotspots around glasgow

That sounds as useful as the cheap housing in Africa I read about.

Why don't the folk that say "rip off Britain" ever run a similar, cheaper service themselves? At which point I suspect they'll see rip off staff and rip off suppliers and rip off councils and rip off don't put that antenna here protests that would quickly see them back letting their current employer rip off Britain to pay them :)

That said, with most of Britain's existing business folk making reality TV shows [Peter Jones "I could ring China tomorrow and create the same product. You're wasting my time..." - yes Peter, but how much longer before the Chinese realise they don't need you?] none of us will be ripping off Britain for much longer.

But only if they all work together.

It astounds me that Premier Travel Inns and Travelodges, who both have WiFi at times, use a company like Swisscom who do not have any roaming agreements with the prominent hot-spot operators in the UK. So instead of being able to book off the 10 minutes I spend in that hotel on WiFi through my BTOpenZone account (please, don't crucify me, but it's come in so handy), I have to pay a fiver for my 30 minutes of minimum access.

I go to the Netherlands, and lo and behold, in my hotel they use T-Mobile, who co-operate with BTOpenZone, with whom I can log in and do what I need to. Italy, not really WiFi'ed up, but a more reasonable price (€6/h or £4/h), dropping sharply when you sign up with yet another WiFi operator group.

Orange France allows users in the EuroStar departure lounge to use WiFi, but only if they use an Orange France account or one of the other French mobile operators. Orange UK? Buggeroff! And here I thought that France Telecom = France Telecom = France Telecom. Evidently not.

We'll see how it goes in Japan this weekend. After that, Sweden and Belgium...

That's why Italy isn't so WI-FIed up. 3G flat data plans exist there and you don't need to look for hot-spots, pay by the hour, remember 5 different passwords, open your browser and log in first otherwise you can't read your mail, etc, etc.

Wasn't 3G supposed to be about FLAT DATA PLANS in the first place?

Have you seen www.fon.com a community wireless sharing bunch... you put a hotspot access point in your home/business and that entitles you to roam freely on anyone elses fon network... :)

you setup the bandwith you wish to allow users and just relax!

if you happen across one of these networks you can buy time at about £3 a day...

its all good! but alas we will never see this in major hotels or open places as people are daftenough to pay insane costs for small snippits of time!