Finding Hotspots With Heat Can Be A Big Problem..
A Report just out says that there are 5.6 million public Wi-Fi hotspots in the UK, which is a remarkable one hotspot for every ten of us who are over the age of 14.
The Self-styled World’s Largest Commercial Wi-Fi Network, iPass, which offers 13 million of the claimed worldwide total of 47.7 million hotspots to its users, has just published a detailed analysis of these areas.
It showed that we in these islands are well served, being third in the international hotspot league table behind the USA and France.
This raises some serious questions about tools intended to help us find a hotspot when we want one.
Take Wi-Fi Finder for instance, a popular hotspot locating App for iOS and Android devices.
It boasts the ability to locate 650,000 public internet access points across 144 countries.
So, if iPass is right, what about the other 47 million?
Hotspot finder websites are even worse.
Front Runner, www.myhhotspots.co.uk, is said to give ‘a fairly exhaustive account of hotspots across the UK’ with ‘over 6500 listed.
We hardly need such poorly penetrating Apps or websites when Wi-Fi is readily available in so many hotels, pubs, restaurants, coffee shops, supermarkets, trains and other public places.
Finding it is not the problem, the real pain is constantly needing to register or login and knowing who charges and who provides it free. Not to mention those who actually deliver to promise.
I was at a hotel last week where the free Wi-Fi was available only in short bursts of uselessly thin bandwidth.
If a business is going to provide a hotspot, it needs to have some heat, because there are millions more out there.
