If you’ve got a laptop in your bag, a smartphone in your pocket, or even an MP3 player to hand, you’ve probably tried hooking up to Wi-Fi hotspots around town. But what’s your rate of success like? Increasingly, we’re finding ourselves connectionless, even when Wi-Fi hotspots claim to be up and running. How are you faring in the Wi-Fi wilderness?
The Electricpig team gets more contact with Wi-fi hotspots than most. We use them daily to post stories, photos and videos without heading back to our desks, but still we can tell we’re not alone in our frustrations.
Twitter is awash with complaints about hotspots not working, or chugging along at a snail’s pace. BT OpenZone seems to cop the most criticism, although in our experience T-Mobile and The Cloud are far from perfect either.
What we find, more often than not, is that these so called Wi-fi hotspots don’t work. They’re either unusably slow, sometimes failing to load anything but their own log-in screens, or are altogether dead, despite broadcasting a Wi-Fi network name as if to taunt us.
We pay for these services, and often fork out for food and drinks in the places that host them too, only to discover they won’t work when accessed.
What’s the answer? We’re waging war on Wi-fi Notspots. We’ll be looking deep into the UK’s Wi-fi hotspot services, and working out how widespread the failure rate is, and how many of you have paid for Wi-fi that doesn’t cough up a connection.
We want you to get involved too. Join our the digital march against Wi-fi Notspots, and demand better services, with better coverage. Join the Facebook group, tweet us @electricpig, and drop us your stories in the comments.
