T-Mobile Hot Spots

[ntractv]

Can Hot Spots have outages at times? I signed up for a one day pass with T-Mobile to see if I liked it (There are a lot of their hot spots in the DC area).

Well I tried three different Starbuck locations in downtown DC (they are everywhere) and no luck. Ten to fifteen minutes each time and no detection.

Or is there a possibility there is a problem with my HP 5555. The LED was flashing orange the whole time.

[dh]

I've used this service for a few months and yes, they do out outages. A while ago I was in a Borders, with the T-Mobile sign on the door, on the counter, even a T-Mobile logo on my coffee cup.

The only thing missing was the network. When I asked the young lady about it, the response was a resounding "duh...".

I've had more success with Starbucks. Most of the ones listed as having Hot Spots seem to work for me.

To be honest, I've gotten fed up with hunting for Borders or Starbucks. My next step is going to be cellular access, hopefully with Sprint.

[Candygogo]

Speaking of T-Mobile....

I've been curious about the Wi-Fi plans. $20/unlimited seems cool if you're going to be out and about often and can be around Starbucks, Borders, heck even some McDonalds sometimes. The daily plans are what gets me.

Correct me if I'm wring, but isn't there a $6/hour plan where the minimum time used is an hour? Meaning, if you put up your six bucks, went to a hotspot to check your email/cruise for about 10 min then leave, that's it! No 50 min. left for the next time. I can understand rounding up to the next minute, but blowing an hour in about 10-15 min.?

:roll:

[ntractv]

Speaking of T-Mobile....

I've been curious about the Wi-Fi plans. $20/unlimited seems cool if you're going to be out and about often and can be around Starbucks, Borders, heck even some McDonalds sometimes. The daily plans are what gets me.

Correct me if I'm wring, but isn't there a $6/hour plan where the minimum time used is an hour? Meaning, if you put up your six bucks, went to a hotspot to check your email/cruise for about 10 min then leave, that's it! No 50 min. left for the next time. I can understand rounding up to the next minute, but blowing an hour in about 10-15 min.?

:roll:

Yeah, seems kinda flaky. I don't want to sit in Starbucks for an hour when I just need to download/send e-mail or surf a few spots. It should be set up where you can use the service anytime until your 60 minutes are up.

[bearista]

Here in the UK some Starbucks have the T-Mobile Hot-Spot service, including my local Starbucks that I visit frequently.

With one wireless card - a PCMCIA one for my laptop, I found that although the card would detect the "tmobile" access point, it would not connect to it. I tried a USB wireless card and it worked perfectly.

The hotspot seems very very flaky though. Sometimes when I connect my WiFi card will not get an IP address through DHCP, sometimes it will only get as far as the login page before giving me "Cannot Find Server" errors and sometimes I can log in but only view a small selection of seemingly random sites, any other sites give me "Cannot Find Server".

Any sometimes it works perfectly! It seems to be very flaky. Although I do know the staff there and have managed to get a few "free 30 minute" vouchers they have available to give out when you buy coffee, that's good for just the odd e-mail check.

[ATraveler]

"Correct me if I'm wring, but isn't there a $6/hour plan where the minimum time used is an hour? Meaning, if you put up your six bucks, went to a hotspot to check your email/cruise for about 10 min then leave, that's it! No 50 min. left for the next time. I can understand rounding up to the next minute, but blowing an hour in about 10-15 min.?"

In point of fact, one would do much better using their daily (24 hr) rate of, IIRC $9.50. This allows unlimited use over the 24 hour period, and it can be used at multiple hotspots, not just the one where you initially log in. However, I believe you must have purchased this in advance of actually using it, so you have a user name and password already. I don't think you can buy it when logging on at a hotspot, but I could be wrong about that.