Most of us have known the joys of trying to get access to the internet when away from our homes or offices. I think the word “sucks” pretty much sums up the experience.I recently traveled to Gnomedex in Seattle, with laptop in tow. Let me outline the joys for you:
- Had a short layover in Atlanta and wanted to check my email. They provide a nice little laptop station for you to recharge the laptop. Try to get online? Sure, but you have to pay $7.99 for the privilege.
- Got to my hotel in Seattle. Wifi access was through T-mobile and it costs $9.99 per day. Access through the Grand Hyatt? The same, at $9.99.
- At Gnomedex itself, in the Bell Harbor. They provided wifi, but the sheer number of attendees meant we were trying to squeeze a bunch of demanding bloggers through a single pipe. In other words, the access was slow to none.
Sound familiar? Even trying to go out to a coffee shop one morning to work. I take the laptop and head out to Panera Bread, which advertises free internet access. Sure, it’s free but it doesn’t work. At least at the store I was at. Tried a Starbucks lately? Yeah, welcome to T-Mobile world again, where you have to pay $9.99 for a day. It seems to me if you’re going to charge a couple bucks for a cup of coffee the least you can do is give away wifi. That’s not very “venti” of you, Starbucks.
Finding Hotspots on the Go
For those of you who don’t know, the word “hotspot” refers to a place where there is access to a wireless network with internet access. Hotspots really are everywhere, but the quality of them varies and they can be a little hard to find if you go out blindly. There are a couple ways you can find them:
- Use a wifi hotspot finder service to find them ahead of time.
- Use a wifi hotspot finder device.
First, the device. Do a search for “Wireless Hot-Spot Finder” on Google and you’ll find all kinds of things show up. IOGear makes a few of these things. They are keychain devices that will light up when they sense a hotspot. It sits there and “listens” for 802.11 wireless signals, and they do a good job of cutting out any potential interference from cordless phones, microwaves, or Bluetooth phones.With this, you can be on the hunt for wifi without having to constantly boot up your laptop and see if anything is around.
The other way to go is to search for hotspots online. PC Mechanic actually provides access to a hotspot finder directly from the site. But, there are others out there as well, including:
Actually, Google also offers a way of finding hotspots via their Google Maps service. Just search for your city and then put “wifi” after it. So, for example, to find hotspots in Tampa, FL, I would type in “Tampa, FL wifi” and I would get a listing. But, an even better way of doing it is gWifi. This is an independent service that integrates with Google Maps to make searching for hotspots even simpler. Another one is Hotspotr.
Free Wifi For All
In an ideal world, the internet would be everywhere. We would be able to open up our laptops anywhere and just go online. No hunting for hotspots. We’re not there yet. But, the good news is that in the next several years we are likely to make huge strides in that direction. And Google is likely to be a major player.
Google has been experimenting in free wifi in the city of Mountain View, California. They actually mount networking equipment to public utility poles in the city. Google is also partnering with Earthlink to try to get free wifi into the city of San Francisco. Nortel has launched a free city-wide wifi network in the city of Annapolis. Cities across the U.S. are slowly starting to bring in free wifi.
Perhaps the most exciting thing to watch, though, is probably the bidding war for the bandwidth now used for analog public television. The FCC has ruled that all analog television much cease by February of 2009. After that date, we will all be using digital signals to receive our television. So, the question remains what happens to that bandwidth that is now being used for analog TV? Well, the government is planning to auction it off. It was thought that Google might be one of the bidders on this spectrum, with the hopes that Google would turn around and set up free wifi that would truly work. This particular spectrum is well known for being able to traverse long distances and go through walls. This is what made it ideal for analog television and would also make it ideal for wireless internet access.
One of the provisions of the auction process was to require a licensee of the bandwidth to sell access to it’s network on a wholesale basis. It is called the “open access” provision. Google announced it would bid if the open access provision was truly open, meaning open applications, open devices, open services and open networks. In other words, Google was looking to univeralize internet access using the bandwidth, providing what is called a “third pipe” for broadband into homes. Very intriguing. Of course, there is big money in telecom, and the existing telecom providers have been less than keen about Google’s idea. And the FCC ultimately played ball with telecom, approving a version of open access that was not what Google was hoping for. This begs the question: Will Google still bid? We are waiting to find out.
A Word on Security
Free wifi for all is very utopian and, honestly, just a matter of time. But, it begs some real hard looks at network security. An open, public wifi network would be a hacker magnet is every possible way. There are already huge risks by simply accessing the internet on a public hotspot. You definitely want to have a firewall in operation and secure Windows down by not sharing out any files. But, even then, a skilled hacker could have a field day.
Truly open wifi would need to take this into account. Users are users, and you can’t depend on the average end user to be able to secure their PCs down adequately on open public wifi.
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