Commercial HotSpot services - a mini-survey

I just got back from a 9-day trip to Vienna. I was there visiting my grandparents, attending a few family get-togethers including grandad's 85th birthday. So since this wasn't a business trip and there were no presentations planned, I figured this would be agreat trip to test the isefullness of my Palm Tungsten C as a mobile office.

You see, the Tungsten C has WiFi built in, and Vienna, due to the existence of metronet is probably one of the most WiFi'ed cities in the world, including a number of cafés within walking distance of the apartment we borrowed for the week, in downtown Vienna.

I've used metronet before with my lap-top, and apart for the horrible pricing for occasional users like myself (who are left with only the prepaid version of their product), their service seems to be ok.

On the way to and from Vienna, I also had the opportunity to test the commercial WiFi networks at the Copenhagen Airport and the Vienna Airport (well almost anyway).

Read on for a mini-survey of these services.

Copenhagen Airport (info)

1. Provider - Self run
2. System - Aptilo
3. Roaming Partners - TDC scratch card (Pre-paid), iPass
4. Coverage - seemingly minimal, signs indicate "Wireless Zone", some bleeding to other areas
   Stalls after entering cc details
5. Price - DKK 40 for 30 minutes, DKK 60 for 1 hour, DKK 80 for 4 hours
6. SSID - cph
7. Billing (and Palm Support) - Captive Portal allows purchase of pre-paid minutes via credit-card. This however requires a browser with javascript and pop-ups, ie. not for the Palm Tungsten. TDC Scratch Cards may be purchased at the Information Desk, however these seem to suffer the same problems of requiring a pop-up to be open for the duration of a connection. iPass seem to have a Palm client, but I haven't tested that yet.
8. Comment - There is absolutely no information available to help you connect from a PDA. Given the transitative nature of Airports it would seem that PDA's might make up a major part of the devices in the future.

== Vienna Airport Schwechat (info (pdf))

1. Provider - Self run
2. System - Cisco
3. Roaming - (Free service requires no roaming)
4. Coverage - Good coverage in restaurants and terminals
5. Price - Free (for now)
6. SSID - Wireless Vienna Airport
7. Billing (and Tungsten support) - Although the service is free, it still requires you to pass through a captive portal. This captive portal seems to stall trying to "Locate Computer on Network" when used from a Palm Tungsten C.
8. Comments - Get clued in guys. PDA's are important to business travellers, and more and more of them have WiFi built-in.

Metronet Austria (info)

1. System - Own
2. Roaming - eWave, T-Mobil Austria, One wlan, Telia HomeRun
3. Coverage - impressive coverage in cafe's, restaurants, hotels and highway stops all over Austria
4. Price - prepaid at EU 20 for 2 hours. Subscriptions pricing here.
5. SSID - metronet
6. Billing (and Tungsten Support) - Captive Portal allows purchase of pre-paid minutes via credit-card. This however requires a browser with javascript and pop-ups, ie. not for the Palm Tungsten. Once the account has been purchased metronet offer VPN support via PPTP, which is compatible with the Mergic VPN client bundled with the Tungsten C. Although this is in beta, it seems to work ok, and is an elegant solution to the problem of pop-ups and javascript-based billing.
7. Comments - was very unstable in july 2003, often not available in a specific cafe. Also Metronet seems to suffer from a problem related to log-off. In some instances just closing the pop-up window on a browser will not log you off, resulting in usage of minutes from your pre-paid account, even after you leave the location.