Lo-Fi

[howeird]

Well, it seems that the AT&T wi-fi service at Starbucks is only available to folks who have AT&T internet (DSL) at home. dave_gallaher was right, there's no connection between the MediaNet service which lets me use my cell phone as a 420kbs modem and the hot spot service which would let me use my laptop's wifi card as a normal ~54Mbps connection. Boo hiss.

After 45 minutes on the phone with AT&T customer support & wifi support, it's obvious none of their southern belles have a clue about wifi hotspots. Very nice young women, they tried to be helpful, they even asked others around them, but the clue-by-4 needed to answer the question of "what service do I need to buy from AT&T to be able to use an AT&T wifi hot spot" has not been used on any of their phone staff.

It also has not been used on the Starbucks staff, or on either att.com or starbucks.com webmasters.

When you connect to the ATTWIFI SSID at Starbucks, it says you should have the opportunity to create an account, either a day pass or a monthly, but when I hit that button, I get the T-mobile page which says call AT&T. Obviously for expediency, AT&T has piggybacked onto the existing T-mobile service and stupidly trusts their arch rival to do right by them.

So, I will keep the T-mobile account, and use my phone modem for away-from-hotspot locations. No way am I getting slow DSL at home just to access wifi elsewhere, especially when Comcast gives me 16Mbps at home for a few pennies more.