toni magni - interoperability infrastructure actor
2011-W52-5 2011-12-30 Friday
Boingo Hotspots Don't Work Well
Dear Traveller,
Boingo is an internet service provider for wireless internet across the world. It has hot spots in many locations such as airports and hotels.
About a year ago, i purchased 10 credits of the Boingo at an airport. It was a good deal. I think it payed about 10-11 USD for 10 credits, each credit is for 1 hour of internet usage, which is pretty much the cheapest way to get online from an airport outside of the country where i have a cell phone data plan. And the way it works is easy: i downloaded the app from the App Store, and i just had to launch it, and tap start, after having connected to the open Boingo access point.
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Image via Wikipedia"]
[/caption]
It worked OK for a few times: in some places it would not work, others it would, and i was able to use 3 or 4 credits.The around february or 2011, i was in paris, and couldn't get it to work so i decided to call customer care. They were not able to help me (couldn't find my account). Eventually i had to leave, so i decided to continue over email, so i could use the credits for the next trips.
The email exchange was useless. I kept getting replies from different customer care reps, (Eric Ortiz, Mary O'connor, Bronwyn Olsen, Mitchell Owen), always very polite, with warm wishes, but no practical info on how to solve the problem i had. What i did get out of the email exchange is that there might be two ways of purchasing credits: one is from the App Store, the other from boingo directly. The App Store way doesn't really create an account on boingo, or maybe it does but one should be able to log in with iTunes credentials (which i was not able to do). It also seems that the App Store approach could be device specific. That is, if i purchase the boingo app with credits from the app store, and i then switch device, (say i go from iPod touch to iPhone), then i loose all the credit i have).
In short, avoid Boingo, or use it being aware that you might be able to get only a fraction of the service they offer.
