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Free Wifi at AT&T hotspots

Wait, what?

I have my iPhone at home right now and I opened Safari but remained on the Edge network. I was under the impression that if I had an iPhone and I opened Safari on my phone I would have someone from AT&T or Starbucks show up at my house, install a wireless router and DSL and then "service me"?!?! Is this not true? I mean, I do have an iPhone!?!? ;)

IT'S FREE!! I've never seen a homeless person at a shelter throw the food back in the server's face because the mashed potatoes were lumpy. :D
 
spaceballl said:
I wish rather than having to log on and all this stuff, that they detected our IMEI numbers and that way we would auto log on, and be connected to wifi when walking by starbucks, etc, even when we didn't realize it.
Click to expand...

The login process takes forever a pain
 
akonradi said:
What does skype have to do with firmware? If they wanted to release it, they wouldn't need a new firmware version.
Click to expand...
They would if they insist on having notifications before launching an iphone version. So when AT&T makes wifi a part of their subscription, and Apple releases 2.2 with notifications, the skype ducks could be in a row. It is speculative of course, but the skype iphone silence has been deafening. :rolleyes:
 
I'm sitting in my local *bucks right now and I'd have to say the sign on process was a little clugy. But it works as designed and I'm grateful because I can now drop my $20 per month ATT wifi account I started when I got my phone and itouch a while back.

It was frustrating however that it first tried to access tmobile so I had to manually select ATT. It then tried to surf a couple of sites before presenting the appropriate ATT phone # entry screen.

Bottom line. It works and I'm thankful to have the free service!
 
scirica said:
I'm sitting in my local *bucks right now and I'd have to say the sign on process was a little clugy. But it works as designed and I'm grateful because I can now drop my $20 per month ATT wifi account I started when I got my phone and itouch a while back.

It was frustrating however that it first tried to access tmobile so I had to manually select ATT. It then tried to surf a couple of sites before presenting the appropriate ATT phone # entry screen.

Bottom line. It works and I'm thankful to have the free service!
Click to expand...

So how did you get on? :) I tried yesterday, no dice. After I hop on attwifi and fire up Safari, I see three fields, User ID, Provider and Password. I tried just entering my phone number as my User ID but I am brought back to the same screen. The instructions are very vague from AT&T... :eek:
 
bytethese said:
So how did you get on? :) I tried yesterday, no dice. After I hop on attwifi and fire up Safari, I see three fields, User ID, Provider and Password. I tried just entering my phone number as my User ID but I am brought back to the same screen. The instructions are very vague from AT&T... :eek:
Click to expand...

Well it wasn't instant. I tried two bookmarked links before I got the page that asks for your iPhone number. I'd say try to access a couple standard sites (google, yahoo) and see if that page comes up. I'm on it now.

Good luck!
 
scirica said:
Well it wasn't instant. I tried two bookmarked links before I got the page that asks for your iPhone number. I'd say try to access a couple standard sites (google, yahoo) and see if that page comes up. I'm on it now.

Good luck!
Click to expand...

So you just kept trying and finally got a page asking for your iPhone number? Then had to wait for the text message for the link? Seems like a lot of work. :(

I have class again tonight after work, I guess I'll pop by Starbucks and try it again. :)
 
This is bullocks that iPhone users can get free AT&T WiFi, but I still can't free WiFi as a DataConnect customer!
 
From http://9to5mac.com/

"The easiest way to do this is to download a MAC address spoofer and once you legitimize your iPhone, change your MacBook Airport MAC address to be the same as your iPhones. This is much quicker and easier than typing the URL sent by AT&T."
 
bytethese said:
So you just kept trying and finally got a page asking for your iPhone number? Then had to wait for the text message for the link? Seems like a lot of work. :(

I have class again tonight after work, I guess I'll pop by Starbucks and try it again. :)
Click to expand...

It was probably 3 minutes before I was on...for some that is a lifetime if you are just stopping by and want to check email while waiting for the barista. I wasn't in a hurry and therefore it wasn't a big deal. If I didn't get the tmobile network first, it would have been even a little quicker. May not be an issue for many.
 
Great but why make it more complicated

spaceballl said:
I wish rather than having to log on and all this stuff, that they detected our IMEI numbers and that way we would auto log on, and be connected to wifi when walking by starbucks, etc, even when we didn't realize it.
Click to expand...

I agree, it is nice of AT&T to do it finally but why make us go through these steps to get it connected.
 
^^^^^ yeah. It was sooooooo complicated. How did I ever figure it out?



bytethese said:
Yeah, then what am I missing? :)

See my previous post: https://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=6523456
Click to expand...

I doubt that you're missing anything. My guess is that it's taking AT&T more than a few hours to activate this service for all locations.

I didn't receive that announcement text message. I read about it here. I went to a Stsrbucks at lunch yesterday and it just worked.
 
clayj said:
Seems like an awful lot of work to use WiFi, when 3G is basically just as fast. I'd use this new feature, but the 24-hour limit and having to go through that process over and over and over again every day would get tired very fast.
Click to expand...

not true. wifi on average is much faster than 3G.

really the only time I am willing to use Safari to browse is when I am on wifi. It has to be really important for me to sit there waiting for 3G.

Anything else like making a phone call, email, texting msgs, running most apps, Edge is fast enough.

Really, 3G is the in between compromise that has all the drawbacks and none of the advantages. Unlike Edge, it drains the battery. Unlike WiFi, it's speed for web surfing is too slow. The only thing it has going for it, is it is reasonably faster than Edge when it's a must that I access a website. Of course, then Safari simply crashes that much faster and it saves me time finding that out.
 
kironin said:
not true. wifi on average is much faster than 3G.

really the only time I am willing to use Safari to browse is when I am on wifi. It has to be really important for me to sit there waiting for 3G.
Click to expand...
Wifi is much faster, but not THAT much faster, than 3G -- at least for me. I have no qualms surfing over 3G. By contrast, I find EDGE to be too slow for it to be worthwhile.
 
ellsworth said:
Pay-As-You-Go non-iphone plan or the iphone pay as you go plan? I'm pretty sure it's the non-iphone plan since you said you're not paying the extra $30 a month for internet.



If AT&T is smart enough to run the phone number you submit through a verification bank of some'sort, I think not, but I could be wrong. Like maybe they would run the number to make sure it's an ATT #. Ya think so?
Click to expand...


A NON i phone plan. I bough the sim only pay as you go plan when i still had my palm treo. Then i got a jailbreaked iphone and it works like a charm :)
 
kironin said:
Really, 3G is the in between compromise that has all the drawbacks and none of the advantages. Unlike Edge, it drains the battery. Unlike WiFi, it's speed for web surfing is too slow. The only thing it has going for it, is it is reasonably faster than Edge when it's a must that I access a website. Of course, then Safari simply crashes that much faster and it saves me time finding that out.
Click to expand...


My experience is entirely different. I have the original iPhone; my mom has the 3G phone.
At her house, where AT&T's coverage is a bit spotty, I did some side-by-side tests.
On San Francisco's local news site http://www.sfgate.com (which is over 1 MB),
my iPhone on EDGE took just over 2 minutes to fully load, while the 3G phone
did it in 30 seconds. I tried again on another site, https://www.macrumors.com
On EDGE, the MacRumors home page (roughly 300 KB) took 40 seconds,
while the 3G phone did it in 10 seconds flat. So while Apple claims "twice as fast",
in my case it was four times faster. BTW, I browse Safari all the time on EDGE. ;)
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5F136 Safari/525.20)

works great for me an the sign in process is quick and easy
 
stagi said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5F136 Safari/525.20)

works great for me an the sign in process is quick and easy
Click to expand...

I just tried it at the local Barnes & Noble. The sign in process wasn't cumbersome, but it did take about 5 minutes to get going. Not good for checking your email or googling something while you're standing in line waiting to check out/get coffee. But not bad if you're going to surf for a while while drinking your coffee IMHO.
 
Great Way For At&t To Reduce Cellular Data Use

So you are sipping a latte or snarfing a Big mac and take your iPhone off the 3G or Edge network and use WiFi. Great! AT&T wins.

Your $30 a month unlimited data plan just generated more profit for AT&T since you've used it less.

I keep my iPhone at my work desk all day with it plugged into the charger and keep refreshing a large web page every chance I get, just so I use a lot of data bandwidth. :eek:
 
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