Study: There's a Wi-Fi Hotspot For Every 150 People In the World 63
mpicpp sends a BBC report on a study that found there are, on average, 150 people per Wi-Fi hotspot, worldwide. In the U.K. alone, there is one hotspot for every 11 people. The study estimates there will be roughly 47.7 million hotspots worldwide by the end of the year. France has the most, followed by the U.S., the U.K., and China. Future growth is expected to be high:
"Over the next four years, global hotspot numbers will grow to more than 340 million, the equivalent of one Wi-Fi hotspot for every 20 people on earth, the research finds. But this growth will not be evenly distributed. While in North America there will be one hotspot for every four people by 2018, in Africa it will be one for every 408. While Europe currently has the most dense wi-fi coverage, Asia will overtake it by 2018, according to the report."
And they're basically useless except to the owner. (Score:1)
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Hotspots just enable hackers to do stuff that previously only NSA and friends could and did. We should design the internet in a way that its irrelevant for security from where you are using it, and who sits in the middle.
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This seems more like a count of APs, not hotspots. They don't mention what you can do with them. If you have to pay to get to the Internet (other than cafes that you have to buy a coffee), then it isn't a "hotspot" it's paid wireless internet.
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it doesn't sound like a count of ap's too much though? or maybe it is..
without reading the article(duh, wha the fu you expect??) I reckon it's hotspots as in paid(one way or another, like being a customer of a certain operator) hotspots. in some places the isp's blanket neighbourhoods with these - as alternative to getting a dsl line.
why? because for those it's easy to get stats. that, and the french are kind of dicks so why wouldn't they setup for pay hotspots like mad to get off the free moochers...
besid
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Hotel rates are largely determined by who is paying.
Expensive hotels often cater to people on expense accounts who really don't care what the bill is.
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If you count our phones HotSpot capability, we've got 5 WiFi HotSpots for 4 people in my house - I know several people whose homes are passing 2 HotSpots per resident.
Flag (Score:2)
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Maybe if enough people flag spam posts they disappear? If that includes FRIST PENIS posts, all the better.
But really, I'd guess it's about avoiding legal responsibility for user content.
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Just so long as you don't mind me smearing anti-whateveryouare slurs on your house in faecal matter, you might have a point.
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What's the point of a "flag as inappropriate" icon? Isn't that what moderation is supposed to be for?
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check your privilege and prepare to be culturally enriched.
Freifunk (Score:1)
In Germany, people have started creating a free as in freedom wifi hotspot network, offering restaurants bakery shops and cafes to join. There is no login. No tracking. Just surfing.
http://freifunk.net/en/
Because freifunk has no login at all, it has a good positon according to TFA:
"At the moment you have to have a separate log-in for every hotspot and ultimately the winning providers are those that will offer the easier access experience," she said.
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In Germany, people have started creating a free as in freedom wifi hotspot network, offering restaurants bakery shops and cafes to join. There is no login. No tracking. Just surfing.
Free as in freedom or free as in a "bottomless" cup of coffee? Sit down, spend more, but don't overstay your welcome?
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frei is generally of the unrestrained variety
free stuff is usually said to be kostenlos (without cost).
Makes sense... (Score:1)
Still low compared to college dorm/cheap apartment ratio of about 10 years ago - those folks are spreading out, and spreading expectations.
We sometimes see ideas spreading 'virally', but really, largely shared ideas are often established generationally - the 'viral' ideas are usually just those ideas exposing and exploiting those slowly growing generational ideas that have been growing as people's desires and needs shift.
Wifi is an expression of this expanding set of generations desire to be ever connected
Rule of Thumb (Score:4, Interesting)
Having traveled a lot in both rich and poor countries, I have come up with a general rule of thumb: the richer the country, the worse the Wifi access. It's always the poorest places that have completely open wifi absolutely everywhere.
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Because they don't know how to enable security. Poverty and Ignorance go hand in hand.
Get off my lawn. (Score:1)
Fuck your "homespot", get off my lawn. Doesn't "not given the option to opt out before receiving it" sound like digital rape? There will be no vendor supplied WiFi in my house, no sir.
Per TFA:
"US provider Comcast caused controversy when it introduced its public home wi-fi service in the summer because customers were not given the option to opt out before receiving it.
Such "homespot" public wi-fi will see explosive growth rising to more than 325 million in 2018 and taking wi-fi "from the cities to the suburb
WiFi in France (Score:4, Informative)
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Also, in France I had terrible problems with latencies and ofc with Youtube
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No. French ISP users generally have control over whether the hotspot is publicly shareable or not. My experience is with Free but the other French ISPs should be comparable. People that want to use the hotspots of other users have to explicitly activate sharing on their box as this is how they obtain the username & password needed to pass through the captive portal on the public SID. Users that do not share their bandwidth turn off the public hotspot, but lose the ability to use the hotspots others on t
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you have no control over that hotspot
Wrong, with Free you can decide to turn the hotspot off completely, turn in on but keep in private (for your own personal use only), or turn it on and also share it.
If the hotspot is off or private, you can't use other Free APs for your own use. If you share, you have free access to any Free hotspot. Up to you t
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Exactly, also you have no control over that hotspot, the company uses your payed line to make more money, as they sell this to others as a service and on top of everything, you have no control to your router whatsoever, you have to login to the company's website and see what limited options they provide you.
Also, in France I had terrible problems with latencies and ofc with Youtube
I think you are talking about Free. :
The router is indeed completely controlled by the ISP and you use the company's website for settings. However, it not as bad as it may seem because
- The public hotspot is independent from your home connection. The IP is different and you are not liable if something bad is done with it.
- You can disable the hotspot feature (but you lose access to others hotspots), you can also turn off WiFi completely.
- QoS is used to prioritize connections. The order is : VoIP, TV, Home
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The highest public AP count I have ever seen on my phone, 34, I once noted as I exited Le Châtelet Metro station in Paris.
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I seem to remember that when I enabled my French modem/router as a hotspot in order to be able to use other hotspots, my bandwidth got seriously gobbled up by people who weren't me.
For all the use I personally make of hot spots, it just plain wasn't worth it.
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Pretty none in my area. (Score:2)
Because it is rural. :(
Too bad they're all closed :/ (Score:1)
Hotspot handover? (Score:2)
As the article states, currently you have to log in to each hotspot individually. Are there ant plans to implement the protocol which enables you to migrate between hotspots in the same way as you move between cell towers, with each hotspot handing over your connection to the next? This could be useful for pedestrians in city centres, shopping areas etc and would relieve the load on the 3G networks in areas where lots of people are using data connections on their mobile phones. So that as you move between
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That has been possible since (at the very least) the first consumer Wifi APs (802.11b).
Try it yourself, take two access points, stick them on the same network, set the same ESSID/password/etc... and then connect with Wifi, if you turn one or the other AP off, your wifi client will seamlessly switch over to the other. TCP sessions will continue unaffected (except a minor packet loss blip sometimes)
The reason that these company provided "wifi hotspots" don't do that is deliberate. With the replacement of comm
mah bandwidth (Score:1)
Data is incomplete (Score:4, Interesting)
I tested the data for my own country (Netherlands). That website claims we only have 10 hotspots in trains, while all our intercity trains now have wifi. Also, municipalities should be having only 25 hotspots, while entire city centers have free public wifi now. It's a load of rubbish, this website.
I understand it is difficult to get the data... but if you equate the lack of data with "zero", then you make a mistake.
Optimize it! (Score:1)
A global network made by the people for the people.
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Being connected, not always a good thing. (Score:1)
I have a Cat5e cable for each person in my household.
When i go outside, i dont want to be "connected" to anything but the people who exist in the real world.
Call me old fashioned, but trust me, the world (and most of the people in it) is a beautiful place. Just a shame most people can only exist when their being engrossed with a 5/7" screen in-front of their face 24/7, whilst ignoring the real life around them.
iPass marketing (Score:1)
The BBC took a bit of iPass marketing and is passing it off as news.
More than a decade ago, I worked for an ISP that worked to integrate it's dialup internet service with iPass so that our clients could roam and get better service than the old Sprint/GTE Telnet dialup/dumb terminal service offered. iPass was then in the business of coordinating service providers to share with each other - and it still seems to be in the same business, but with WiFi hotspots instead of modems and phone lines.