Hamburg Airport offers 1 hr free WiFi

[sn26567]

After Frankfurt, Munich and Cologne-Bonn, Hamburg now also offers free Wi-Fi, thanks to an agreement with Mobilcom-Debitel.

After one hour the connection will be cut, but the user will have the possibility to purchase credits.

[nightflyer1980]

After Frankfurt, Munich and Cologne-Bonn, Hamburg now also offers free Wi-Fi, thanks to an agreement with Mobilcom-Debitel.

After one hour the connection will be cut, but the user will have the possibility to purchase credits.

As far as I know, the free Wi-Fi service in CGN gives only access to the Website of Cologne-Bonn Airport, not to other Sites. But better than nothing...

[tolipanebas]

More and more airports are moving to this type of complementary internet access whereby you can get a 60 minutes access code texted to you (and your number gets stored, so you can not ask for a second one at the expiration): very nice gesture when waiting for a flight.

[sn26567]

very nice gesture when waiting for a flight.

Especially useful in a paperless society where electronic boarding passes are sent to smartphones by an SMS with a link to internet (like SN does).

In Brussels you have to pay 4.50 euros to Telenet to retrieve your boarding pass, unless you have a subscription to Telenet which is not even available in one half of the country. In such case it is cheaper to print its boarding pass on paper...

[tolipanebas]

Indeed, being a Telenet customer myself, having free wifi access at BRU is very convenient.

Does anybody know why belgacom for instance isn't offering some similar arrangement to its customers (especially the corporate ones) as I am sure they'd appreciate it: is it because they want to push them to go online through the more lucrative 3G, maybe?

[taz001]

for those interested, I use 'boingo mobile' (google it for more info). Many airport (BRU included) and other hot spots available for a reasonable amount per month and you can use a smartphone and tablet on the same account. No time or date limit...

[regi]

How do I set up a wifi connection at home? Single computer and want a wifi but we are not in a wifi hotspot area. Is it practical to do?

routers are sold now for 25 - 30 € a piece. ( they come from 100-150 € ). You connect it to the telephone cable by a splitter.

You have than 4 cable connections and can use multiple devices with Wifi. See manual with router.
Take care to protect it with a password, so the neighbour cannot download through your connection movies or illegal downloads. Recent court cases convicted the owner of the connection and not the downloader, because the owner was supposed to know that he has to protect his router
Your PC/Mac doesn't have to be switched on to use other Wifi devices - just as long as the router is on.

If you have a good internet provider with a free help desk ( I have ) , it is best to go through the settings with the helpdesk. Saves a lot of time , sometimes with small details that can take hours to find out yourself. Installation would be +- 10 minutes.

I have 3 routers, including an old stored Alcatel Speed Touch USB ( in optima forma but no WiFi )
It is generally recognised as one of the weirdest looking internet hardware gadgets
http://viewitem.eim.ebay.cz/ALCATEL-SPE ... 29686/item
A second one is a SMC, but it turns hot sometimes and needs sometimes resetting. Stored as well.
I use since 4 years a rather good D-Link. D-Link has a very helpful and free helpdesk in your language btw.
Oh yes, if you are in for a new printer, think about forking out a bit more to have one that has "network" capability. Your printer is connected to your router, and you can print from your laptop in the living room by WiFi to the place where your printer stands, for example some rooms further in your office.
Also interesting are "new" devices such as the stereo that receives the music from your PC by WiFi.
Possibilities are endless.

Be careful what a helpdesk morron tells you. In most cases it helps to turn off your router ( is not same as resetting !) , have a coffee and turn it on again. Can happen if you had a electricity problem, or if you put a piece of paper on your router, causing some heating.

In some cases you need to buy a new splitter, they go about 5 €.

So you need a router, a splitter, a LAN cable: all stuff together < 40 € at the Carrefour, Vandeborre or Krefel outlet. Succes.
PS: don't drink coffee before installation to avoid that your blood pressure increases too high beforehand

[earthman]

Especially useful in a paperless society where electronic boarding passes are sent to smartphones by an SMS with a link to internet (like SN does).

In Brussels you have to pay 4.50 euros to Telenet to retrieve your boarding pass, unless you have a subscription to Telenet which is not even available in one half of the country. In such case it is cheaper to print its boarding pass on paper...

Ugh, does SN do that crap too? LOT can send you an SMS or an e-mail, and both just contain an URL to some website or other where your boarding pass is.

Lufthansa, on the other hand, can just send you the whole mobile boarding pass as an e-mail with image attachment. Then you just download the email in your email app on your smartphone, and you do not need any internet connection at the airport. Or you use the Lufthansa app, which can also download your boarding pass onto the phone, with no internet needed during your trip. And you can check in with it as well. I was quite pleased with how this worked, then I was disgusted when I tried the e-mail boarding pass offered by LOT (who, btw, can't even manage to generate a proper internet self-print pdf boarding pass, the fonts were wrong and had missing characters even on a windows pc).

Back to free wifi, I was at MUC on February 6th, there was a wifi network called something like 'free public wifi', but I couldn't connect to it. I could connect to the t-mobile wifi net which can give you half an hour free access per day. When returning on February 8th, the 'free public wifi' network could no longer be found. More importantly, there is free tea/coffee and newspapers in T2 at MUC.

At AMS you can also get an hour of free internet, however, if you have an internet account with xs4all (which is owned by KPN, the operator of the wifi network at AMS), you can use all KPN wifi access points as much as you want, including the ones at AMS. And if I remember correctly, you could use the wifi to look up departures/arrivals and other schiphol info even if you did not log in or pay for the wifi.

A few years ago (2008) I was at RNO, and there they had free unlimited wifi, courtesy of some local newspaper or so.

At WAW, the Polish branch of ING has an area in the middle of the pier/departure lounge where they offer free wifi. It's an orange gazebo-like structure with a bunch of comfy chairs and power outlets, quite nice of them. Besides that, I think the major telcos also all have their wifi hotspots at WAW.

[regi]

well , at Heathrow it is simple: put a coin in a PC

[b-west]

Budapest airport has unlimited free wi-fi, very handy during a 4 hour layover I don't like those SMS sign-up services. Either I never get the SMS or they just won't accept non-local numbers.

I also have a boingo subscription, lots of wifi areas accept it, and the price is reasonable if you go for the smartphone subscription.

[fets]

@earthman:
don't connect to the "Free Public WiFi" networks...
see eg http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/31187/m ... blic-wi-fi

[earthman]

@earthman:
don't connect to the "Free Public WiFi" networks...
see eg http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/31187/m ... blic-wi-fi

Well to my defense I have to say two things:

1) I was trying to connect using my smartphone, which does not show whether a detected network is ad-hoc or a normal access point. Obviously I would never bother connecting to ad-hoc networks, but for that I need to know that the network is ad-hoc, and the phone doesn't show this.

2) The network was actually visible in multiple places (almost everywhere in fact) all along Terminal 2 @ MUC, which is a kilometer long. Of course it is possible that multiple laptops were broadcasting this SSID in the terminal, but two days later there was not a trace of this network at the very same airport. This (and the article your reference) now leads me to believe that it may have been a misconfiguration/error of airport computers and/or networks.

[fets]

@earthman:
don't connect to the "Free Public WiFi" networks...
see eg http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/31187/m ... blic-wi-fi

Well to my defense I have to say two things:

There's no need to defend yourself here. It's a common mistake, and it seems you only need one person "lighting the fire" to get a whole airport switched to it.

To stay on topic:
In 2009/2010 I traveled a lot through PHL airport, which at that time had the following policy: Free WiFi on the weekends and for students (with a student ID) at all times. This seemed like a pretty ingenious way to get money from the business travelers while still offering some service to the regular folks. Offcourse, by 2011, the WiFi was free at all times, though slow.. It was better in the US Airways Envoy lounge