Boingo, Not Just For Travellers

Over the past few months I have been trialling the Boingo service from my N95 and N810 mostly. While the service is mostly marketed toward the business traveler, Boingo fits well into the lifestyle of the family man and soccer mom alike.

I know what you're thinking how can a service that gives you access at airports and hotels around the globe? Boingo offers WiFi in a lot more locations than just Hotels and Airports. Using AT&T and Wayport hotposts WiFi is accessible from a large number of McDonald's, Starbucks and the list keeps on growing. The mobile device price of only $7.95 per month is quite a bargain The wife and I have been able to share the account on many occasions however, only one device can use the account at a time.

Software

Boingo's service isn't perfect, I've had some issues at some locations with being able to sign-in. At one point the Boingo software showing the repository for the N810 wasn't the most current version and the version I had wouldn't let me sign in. The first real annoyance is the Boingo software loads on boot on the N810 and continues to run a background process but still requires you to have the application open before connecting. Second annoyance, if you connect to a hotspot first and then launch Boingo, the software will never sign you in. On the other hand if the software is loaded and you connect it signs in almost immediately. The biggest problem here is I had AT&T and Waypoint access points saved, meaning the instant I walked into McDonald's the N810 would sign-in. Auto-connecting is great and normally isn't a problem which comes back to my first and second annoyances.

The S60 software behaves in much the same way except the Boingo software for S60 creates a Boingo access point and requires the device to be set to WLAN scanning to work. Once connected WLAN scanning may be disabled without effecting the connection. Applications such a Psiloc's Connect didn't work in combination with the Boingo software regardless whether WLAN scanning was on or the Boingo software was running.

Customer Service

Customer service and technical support is a challenge for any company, Boingo is no exception. As I mentioned before the Boingo software wasn't showing the latest revision in the repository and wouldn't login. I called technical support because I had no trouble logging into both AT&T or Waypoint on this one particular evening. The woman answering the phone was plenty courteous and she did want to solve the problem but lacked the knowledge to resolve the problem.

She never did ask which version of the Boingo application I was using but that wasn't her biggest error on this call. She failed to understand the N810's abilities and one of those abilities is being able to use my mobile as a modem to connect to the Internet. She insisted I needed to connect via WiFi at home to update the hotspots or uninstall and redownload the Boingo software, all of which I could and had done while at McDondald's. It wasn't until later I decided to check Boingo's site for the latest release. The new release still wasn't appearing in the Boingo repository. In the end the failure of Boingo was both in technical support and their repository. Since this problem I have not had any issues that required a call to technical support.

Service

Logging isn't always as smooth as it could be either and has required me to disconnect and reconnect several times on several occasions. Just this past week, I had to disconnect and reconnect between the AT&T and Waypoint access points to maintain a login. I have seen similar reports among users on twitter, where Boingo maintains a presence and frequently responds to users. Other reports have been the inability to login at some airports, despite being listed and signup or account issues.

Summary

I realize my summary of Boingo may sound a bit on the negative side. Let me be clear this service is well worth the $7.95 price tag. The $19.95 laptop service might also be worthwhile for the shear number of locations Boingo offers service without needing to sign up for WiFi account with AT&T, Waypoint not to mention the thousands of hotels. A single stay in a hotel charging for WiFi could pay for a month of Boingo, making Boingo's rate a down right bargin. I would and will continue to recommend giving Boingo a try.

Comments

[Mark Webster]

Thanks for that review Darla, very informative, and what the hell is "soccer" :p

[xiojason]

I didn't have the N810/Boingo app problem you describe on a two week trip around London and UK parts north.

The Boingo background process loads at startup (taking a whopping 7 megs! Ouch! Does it really need to be that big?), and that's all that it seemed to need. I logged in from numerous BT OpenZone hotspots and an assortment of others. Shortly after picking a network from the list and associating, the Boingo icon would light up in the menu bar and I'd be connected (without having to deal with a splash or login page) seconds later.

I don't think I launched the Boing application myself once on that entire trip.

[xiojason]

I didn't have the N810/Boingo app problem you describe on a two week trip around London and UK parts north.

The Boingo background process loads at startup (taking a whopping 7 megs! Ouch! Does it really need to be that big?), and that's all that it seemed to need. I logged in from numerous BT OpenZone hotspots and an assortment of others. Shortly after picking a network from the list and associating, the Boingo icon would light up in the menu bar and I'd be connected (without having to deal with a splash or login page) seconds later.

I don't think I launched the Boing application myself once on that entire trip.