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iPod touch Europe getting cloud wifi for the touch

I

ipodtouchwaiter

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 22, 2007
6
0
Just spoke to a mate that is a supplier to the cloud in the uk. He reckons the Cloud are doing wifi for the ipod touch next week and not just in the uk but all over europe. Better still he reckons its going to be cheap. Think I might go out and buy one - its almost as good as iphone but cheaper and without the wait!

cheers

Paul
 
Cloud *already* do wifi that is compatible with any device not just the touch.

http://www.thecloud.net/For-you/Cloud-Unlimited

£6.99 a month. If apple can swing a deal cheaper than that I'd be surprised (OTOH I think it was O2 that got the iphone bundle.. and we don't know if they're paying a cheaper rate or something close to retail for it).

OTOH I've never seen a cloud hotspot (they're all in pubs, and I'm not about to start surfing in a pub - I go there to socialise) and the major wifi vendors - Starbucks/Costa Coffee are *not* part of the cloud network. You'd be better off signing up with T-mobile (£20/month), or BT openzone (£10/month for 250 minutes, first 2 months free).
 
Didnt realise they already do something that will work with the touch - thats pretty cool. But from what I heard its going to be cheaper than anything they sell now. Mind you you might be right on tmobile for starbuck - but i was guessing starbucks will probably do it for free soon like in the US. Also not sure I fancy paying £20 a month for wifi! How many places have tmobile got, I cant find it on their site, i know the cloud have 7,500 (from the iphone announcement) and i think with bt you can do roaming onto lots of places - dont think 250- minutes from bt is enough for me though.

says on the link that you dont have to have a user name or password - how does that work, i dont understand!!! Anybody tried it?

think i might sit tight and let a few other people try it first!
 
Doh! just read it properly - you have to have something called a MAC address - anybody know how to find that on your touch. I am hopefully getting one later today, and I think I might try this for a month to see if its worth it

thanks

Paul
 
ipodtouchwaiter said:
D Mind you you might be right on tmobile for starbuck - but i was guessing starbucks will probably do it for free soon like in the US.
Click to expand...

Not a chance.. starbucks use Tmobile and they're not going free any time soon. The price will drop over time, but it'll take a while.

You can apparently use the BT openzone at starbucks too.. they have some kind of peering agreement I think. They do bigger packages but you'd have to pay for it of course (£25/month for their next higher up package which makes it more expensive than Tmobile).

Wifi is very very expensive - much more so than mobile data for example.. and it's orders of magnitude more expensive than DSL.

The cloud is the first time I've seen a wifi provider that charged what I'd call a reasonable amount.. OTOH they have a very poor selection of hotspots.. no point in having thousands of them if they're all in pubs so the chances of being within range of one are minimal.
 
ipodtouchwaiter said:
How many places have tmobile got, I cant find it on their site
Click to expand...

BT Openzone claim about 1500. T mobile claimed more than 20,000 in 2005 (edit: that's marketing weasel talk of course.. they later in that article admit they only have 7,500 in europe)

I you travel by train most of those are independent systems again for which you have to pay by the day (free for first class I believe but if you're paying £200 for a journey the wifi should damned well be free!).
 
EssentialParado said:
Whatever happened to the ideals of a free WiFi world? :(
Click to expand...

It was always a bit of a myth.. even a cafe with a linksys box in the corner is going to be getting a return on their investment (normally more business as people sit around buying coffee).

Free wifi was tried.. around here they had a thing called manchester wireless that had the idea of lots of volunteers sticking aerials on their roofs connected to their routers. It died, unfortunately.

Even the local council proposed free wifi once, but couldn't work out how to fund it (they sold the contract to the cloud in fact, who now offer paid wifi if you're in range of their hotspots, which isn't very often.. I'm in the city centre most weeks and have never come across a cloud hotspot, although I have seen their converted phone boxes once or twice so maybe if you're inside one of those..).
 
The £6.99 looks like a good deal, but you have to sign up for a whole year - not sure about what happens if you get an iPhone in that time.
 
Please hold off signing up for the iPod touch on Cloud unlimited, i am about to post something you may be interested in.

IPODtouchwaiter - would love to know who your friend is..........
 
Went on a reccy over lunch to see what was out there.

The local starbucks no longer has wifi (the person I asked said it broke a while back and nobody's bothered fixing it). They're Tmobile though so it'll be Tmobile/BT Openworld only.

Costa coffee supports quite a number of providers..
Surf And Sip, Bozii, iPass, Trustive that I could subscribe to (Bozii is only £10 a month so is a possiblity), GBIO, GoRemote, WeRoam, BitBuzz, Boingo and Fatport that I couldn't subscribe to, either because they don't take individual subscribers or are not UK based.

I had a wander into a few other cafes but none of them were wifi enabled, so that's it for my town.

Looks like wifi is a bust :( £10 a month for wifi that's only supported in one overpriced coffee shop just doesn't do it for me. Hurry up with the 3G iphone apple!
 
Loge said:
The £6.99 looks like a good deal, but you have to sign up for a whole year - not sure about what happens if you get an iPhone in that time.
Click to expand...

thanks for that. i hadn't realised you had to sign up for a year. i went back to look at their website and you have go into the terms and conditions before you find out that the minimum agreement is for 12 months. should be clearly on the page advertising the £6.99 service.
 
Don't the Cloud and BT Openzone have roaming agreements? If so it will be cheaper to have a Cloud agreement than BT (although I have 250 mins per month free BT openzone as on BT Broadband).

Birmingham city centre has a lot of Cloud coverage but little in part of Wolverhampton where I work

The place where I normally have meetings in London (The Novartis Foundation in Portland Place) has The Cloud so I am looking forward to trying out my Touch on it when I am next down there in 10 days time. Wonder if I will still be on my week 37 Touch by then?
 
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