The good folks at Boingo have supplied me with a demo of their WiFi hotspot service so I can tell you what I think of it. I only got the demo set up last night and used it this morning for the first time so this is a very limited impression of what I found. I’ll keep you informed how the test progresses as I get more exposure to the Boingo Network.
I am in my usual Starbucks this morning where I have always used the T-Mobile hotspot service I pay for. Before I got here I had installed the Goboingo software which sniffs for a WiFi network that can be used with Boingo and lets you log on if so. Since this Starbucks is still a T-Mobile hotspot I was surprised when I opened up the browser and Goboingo popped up and told me that a Boingo network was available. This means that the AT&T service is already in place here alongside the T-Mobile service for now anyway. I logged into the Goboingo login box and was immediately connected to the "tmobile" network according to the Windows network information. It’s working just as usual, I’m just Boingoing (is that a word?) instead of tmobiling. If Boingo continues to work this well I will definitely cancel my T-Mobile hotspot account.
Interestingly, the goboingo software doesn’t appear to be running anywhere and I couldn’t get it to notify me at first. It seems it is attached to Internet Explorer and once I opened an IE window it immediately popped up the dialog box I mentioned. As a die-hard Firefox user I don’t like having to do that as it means I may miss getting notified at times.
UPDATE: I heard from the Boingo folks who clarified that the GoBoingo software is not attached to any web browser. The minor delay I experienced getting notified that a Boingo network was available in the Starbucks was due to the unusual situation in Starbucks. GoBoingo had to probe the T-Mobile network and then make sure that this network was available over AT&T due to Starbucks agreement and once it did that it could present the network as a Boingo network.
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