[itsme]

What do you think about the WiFi calling for students?

My school and many universities have very good WiFi coverage in buildings. Mine requires student log in + PW authentication each time to connect though.

Basement floors have ZERO T-Mobile coverage. Very poor Verizon and Sprint coverage.

[T8y8]

I really want to test this at my school (Seattle University), but I think it may work if the MAC of the phone is excluded from the authentication process. My school allows Xbox360s to be excluded, so I will try and convince them to let me test a UMA phone when I get one. I work in the IT department, so we'll see and I'll let you know.

[aotothemax]

We finally set my brother up with Hotspot@home. It works really well in his apartment, I'll have to ask him and see if he's tried it on campus yet... I remember reading that you can connect to password protected networks and save the pw in your phone, but I don't know how it would work on campus with a vpn and all.

[itsme]

My school uses a different authentication. No password authentication to connect to WiFi, but you have to open a browser and type in a log-in via html form to activate rest of connection.

[clock3687]

Originally Posted by itsme

My school uses a different authentication. No password authentication to connect to WiFi, but you have to open a browser and type in a log-in via html form to activate rest of connection.

My school is similar. The phone's MAC ID has to be registered and is set to an IP address for the rest of the year.

[analogs]

One (sort of major) limitation of Hotspot @ Home is that if the WiFi network you're connecting to requires you to accept a license agreement or anything like that, you likely won't be able to. Any kind of browser-based authentication page can't be accessed with the basic phones (Saumsung t409, Nokia 6086) T-Mobile offers. For instance, cafe's that offer free WiFi often still require you to click "I accept" to a license agreement on a web site. You get redirected to this page as soon as you try to access any site from your browser but this doesn't work on most phones.

I've read that the Curve's browser can actually load the page in some cases but I haven't personally tested it so I can't say for sure. In theory, *IF* future smartphones (particularly Windows Mobile-based devices) actually support UMA, they should be able to handle this situation.

[analogs]

And just to share my personal experience, I've been using H@H for about a year now with pretty good results. Back in November of last year, just after the service was launched in the Seattle test market, I Ebayed myself a Samsung t709. I started using it with my regular old Linksys WRT54G router and it worked okay. Anything was better than NO service, which is what I was getting in my apartment. Since then I've switched to the T-Mobile branded Linksys router and my girlfriend and I both have a t409. The biggest problems with the early hardware was quirky performance when you had other devices on your network. Like if I was on a call and I powered up my laptop, it would drop the call almost every time. If the laptop was already on and connected to WiFi it was fine. I got the new phone at the same time I got the router so I'm not sure which one fixed the problem.

I've had as many as three phones and two laptops all online making calls/surfing the web simultaneously so capacity doesn't seem to be an issue. What does still happen unfortunately is about once or twice a month, the phones lose their connection. I know it's not a problem with the network because my laptop will usually still be online. I have to power cycle the phones and sometimes the router too. Other than that it's been great.

http://compass.t-mobile.com/default.aspx (Just hit no when it asks whether or not you are a representative.)

[Dominican Rep.]

Or you can just go to:


http://www.t-mobile.com/coverage/

[mzrere143]

oh this is cool and why i get no signal at home