more like heads up their ASSES instead of in the Clouds.......

oh well looks like i don't need so much tinfoil for my Hat!

how long b4 someone sees sense and bans all this wifi rubbish...

i'd rather have the birds n the bee's(and food on my plate) than a poxy wifi link.

i know ADSL/BB is throttled to the point it is gagging, but at least it is more secure and faster...

mines the one with the smoking pockets......

Fact is: one or both of these companies couldn't cream enough money off the top with this partnership, and couldn't really give a cr*p about how widespread wifi is. Don't they realise these spin-doctor type quotes have got old?

I received that customer e-mail. I love the way they totally fail to spin the fact that there'll be less access points as "great news".

PlusNet have pulled their WiFi product, citing lack of interest.

Though I'd say it was more down to the fact they only partnered with BT OpenZone, and only in the UK.

This limits access to a very tiny amount of hotspots.

The problem I have found with public WiFi is the fragmentation of services, the high costs for low use and sheer unavailability of hotspots. Not to mention getting online when you do find one is often a nightmare, especially on a WiFi equipped phone.

PlusNet had a nice idea in having a proper PAYG scheme where you paid something like 7p per minute instead of like the majority who want a monthly fee or a one-off £7 or similar for an hour to a day (which is a right rip-off if you just want to check your emails), and you'd have to sign up to half a dozen to even remotely have a chance of getting enough coverage.

Now we have (finally) mobile operators placing caps on their data rates I find it's cheaper to just use GPRS/3G data.

Have been trying out Devicescape which is an aggregation service of hotspot providers where you put in all your accounts and it supposedly makes logging in easy. Not really had much success with it though.

If only BT would enable FON in all of their routers, they'd have the most huge coverage of any WiFi provider! (plus us FONeros would get free WiFi :-) )

BT wanted to put phorm on the Wifi, but "the cloud" told them where to stick it.

Hey Hey you you get off of my cloud.

The whole thing is pathetic. The sooner wi-fi is FREE the better.

A push for people to start signing up to BT mobile broadband maybe?

Sad that the Belkin-Linksys-Dlink community defaults network is dying out. For a while there you could find a free unencrypted AP almost anywhere but these days everyone is setting encryption to on.

Paris, because she would never give it away for free.

You would need something like targeted adverts to pay for the free connection..

You get nothing good that is free the best things in life cost.

Monkey (Great Sage, Equal of Heaven) has a real cloud? That is what I want, not some hotspot rubbish but personal flying transport. Where's my flying car!

Mines the one with the staff in the pocket.

"If only BT would enable FON in all of their routers, they'd have the most huge coverage of any WiFi provider! (plus us FONeros would get free WiFi :-) )"

Checked your local routers recently ? BT have a very nasty habit of opting people into FON without their knowledge or consent. Curiously, there has been a spate of this recently.

And where did you get that little snippet from, inside information? Or are you just jumping a tall conclusion from a standing start?

More likely the cost to BT isn't worth the tiny amount of usage their users get from it. Wifi was going to be huge but uptake hasn't been anything like as fast as was assumed 3 or 4 years ago. Partly because of 3G and partly because there aren't nearly as many sad people out there as the comms companies assumed.

Couldn't agree more, unfortunately the fat cats at BT and the morons at OFCOM won't agree with us...

Couple of (differing) viewpoints

1) There might not be an active community doing it, but there's enough numpty home users not realising that they CAN set security.

2) Given the approach that the RIAA et al take, if you DO know that you can set security, would you want to be sued for something someone else does through your WiFi connection?

Unsecured wireless routers (or routers secured with the default sky password) than BT openzone/cloud spots so I don't see the problem.

"Checked your local routers recently ? BT have a very nasty habit of opting people into FON without their knowledge or consent. Curiously, there has been a spate of this recently."

If you contact the OpenZone Help Desk is not the advice given not to access the Fon Network with a BT Log In [Email Address and Password]? And have not BT Opened up the OpenZone Field by withdrawing to Securing and Expanding and Extending WiFi Support InfraStructure? 21CN Global Build.

Go back the the BBC's Have Your Say pages, you're not wanted here.

I have sent letters to OTELO and BT itself demanding why my cancellation notice is not being honored. JUST IN TIME AS WELL. Looks like the Phorm issue is being backed by somebody high up in government or the city of london police are really as stupid as they sound.

BT, bah !

But, is there a way for me to filter out people with the stupid coat icon?

You know the always finish their comment with some non-funny Coat Comment ....

dull dull dull

Nick

sorry, i thought it was funny

...the one with another coat in the pocket

I'm glad I canceled my BTo subscription now. I've gone over to a 3g connection, as almost all the hotspots I used were the cloud or t-mobile. Most of them _used_ to be BTo hotspots though.

Sure cancel your BT subscription if you want, and all the other Phorm associated ISPs, but don't you realise it will do you no good? If Phorm does not get the go ahead then it matters not a jot. If Phorm does get the go ahead then every ISP will be using it, or something very like it, within weeks. So changing ISPs will achieve nothing.

It's no good claiming you'll go to an honest ISP who wouldn't do such a thing to it's users. If money can be made from legally using Phorm then every ISP will be in the game in no time. The only way to avoid it will be to pay extra for you broadband.

I too received the notification from BT and this was the push I needed to migrate to mobile broadband. I signed up with t-mobile through my www.moneybackheaven.com and got an extra £36.50 discount.

It's far easier to use than I was used to getting with BTOpenZone - I just needed the push so thank you BT.

Regards

Mike