Boingo Mobile for Symbian
 

Boingo, a very large wifi consolidator, has started offering a Symbian version of its Boingo for Mobiles. For US$7 a month, you get PDA access to its world wide network of wifi spots. In the UK (for example) this comes out to 11 thousand spots including the major airports (Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester, Edinburgh, etc.; the major train stations (Liverpool St, Paddington, etc). Schipol, Naritta, JFK, CDG, and many other airports are included. There is no contract and this can be added on a month by month basis.

My thought is to consolidate this with Truphone, Fring, etc.

Stu,
I'm very interested in this. I recently reactivated my dormant Boingo account and noticed the smartphone/PDA option. It looks like this is about $7/mo for unlimited, global usage. The same service for the PC is about $30/mo. When you get Boingo for the S60 can you tether your PC? How do they restrict you to using just the smartphone and not another device?

Really interesting, but i have the same question of DRN :D

I don't know. I have two devices registered to the same Boingo account (a Windows Mobile and a Symbian device). Both work fine. Obviously, we don't registered both at once.

I'm not sure how they can tell, but I think it isn't that easy to share a connection in the fashion you are mentioning. Neither Windows Mobile Internet Sharing or the Nokia Data Suite have an out of the box solution.

On xda-developers, there are solutions out there to turn a Windows Mobile device into a virtual hotspot. They pull this off by hacking the dll file for the Internet sharing to insert wifi on the receiving end in place of bluetooth or USB. I would think that you could do this in the other direction.

Have you tried using your user ID & Password with the Windows (XP/2K) version of the Boingo Program?

I'm in a Boingo hotspot tomorrow. I'll let you know.

Boingo Mobile coverage is much smaller than that of the full blown PC version. In the UK they only allow access in 2970 locations.

Here's the location list for Boingo Mobile http://mobile.boingo.com/locations/?lang=en&curr=USD

It works fine.

I'm in AZ at the moment staying at a hotel which has a Boingo Virtual Accesspoint (the hhonors point is wide open so this is an academic exercise), but I tried my Boingo Mobile password on my phone (works fine) and then my notebook (didn't work).

Vlad must know something I don't.

I just received my e61 and I'm thinking of cutting my Boingo service over to the mobile version. I'd like to find out if you can tether your PC to the phone and access WiFi through the phone, but that seems a little essoteric to find an easy answer. Of course if there's a way to go directly to the Boingo via the PC I wouldn't need to know this.

Don,

When I used the Nokia connect software, I tried to manually key in the Accesspoint name for Boingo and it didn't work. I also tried another hotspot name and didn't suceed. Lastly, I tried my Boingo username/password in the Boingo PC client and that didn't work. That is where I stopped my playing.

See also my private e-mail.