BT Steal Your Internet !!!

Alikay

My son gets access to someone's BTFON connection in his bedsit 150 miles from home, so likewise I'm happy for someone else's son/daughter/laptop to make use of ours. Share and share alike. Stopping it would only make the ISPs and mobile networks richer as people will still want internet access away from their permanent home, so would just have to pay for it.

ComplexP

Forgive me if I'm hopelessly misinformed here but I was under the impression that BT had a monthly charge to use this FON network right?

tanith

ComplexP wrote: »

Forgive me if I'm hopelessly misinformed here but I was under the impression that BT had a monthly charge to use this FON network right?

I don't get charged (but I guess there is some kind of charge factored into my BTcharges but hidden) for using the FON away from home and like the other poster I am happy for someone to do likewise to my home hub...as far as I am aware its free for BT customers... I may be wrong...

EDIT: take a look http://www.btfon.com/

LeeSouthEast

It's unrelated to the issue, but I struggle (still) with the concept of this being charged in 'minutes'. In the day of "always on" internet, it seems a bit peculiar. Surely they'd be better of charging it either by day/week, and/or an amount of transfer like everyone else??

ComplexP

tanith wrote: »

I don't get charged (but I guess there is some kind of charge factored into my BTcharges but hidden) for using the FON away from home and like the other poster I am happy for someone to do likewise to my home hub...as far as I am aware its free for BT customers... I may be wrong...

EDIT: take a look http://www.btfon.com/

It seems it's free if you are a BT Broadband Customer but I think it's £5 per month if not.

I suppose if want to enter that 'community' then so long as it's a give and take situation then I guess it's alright. If I never had need of WiFi I would probably not want to be used as a transmitter but if I was using it I'd feel compelled to contribute.

Interesting idea, I suppose.

abulkasam

If this IS true - regardless of not being charged for other people using it, if it's YOUR router, then its your mains supply and your electricity bill. Are BT paying for that too?

tanith

abulkasam wrote: »

If this IS true - regardless of not being charged for other people using it, if it's YOUR router, then its your mains supply and your electricity bill. Are BT paying for that too?

What rubbish the router is already on in my house anyway , someone using my wireless link isn't using my electricity... they are connecting wirelessly to my wifi..... and if I am using my laptop to connect to someone else's FON wirelessly how pray am I using their electricity?

mrJ_5

if your not using the internet, turn the router off - then no one "uses" your electricity

ComplexP

I used to turn my router off at night but then my speeds dropped. Turned out that the exchange was seeing it as a dropped connection every night and decided to reduce my speeds to improve stability.

I leave it on all the time now.

So much for being green.

sly666

tanith wrote: »

What rubbish the router is already on in my house anyway , someone using my wireless link isn't using my electricity... they are connecting wirelessly to my wifi..... and if I am using my laptop to connect to someone else's FON wirelessly how pray am I using their electricity?

Of course your using their electricity to connect to someone elses hub! The hub is a transceiver as is your laptop, your using both your and their electricty!
When no wifi clients are connected the wifi just sits in standby transmitting very little, hence using less power.
Anyway with the new firmware BT have removed the option to turn off the wifi so you cannot just use the hub as a LAN router.

I'm not saying FON will reducing my data allowance, but it DOES reduce my speed if others are using it as a hot spot. BT say the max speed it will use is 512k (half a meg) As i'm out in the sticks here that equates to just under half my bandwidth!
BT Scumbags!