Using BT OpenZone (U.K.)

[JulianL]

I have an iPhone 4 on Orange PAYG and, after a few hiccups at Orange's end, I've finally got my 12 months of OpenZone access activated on my account so I thought that I'd give it a go this afternoon but it didn't really work the way that I was hoping so I'd appreciate some advice from other users as to whether I'm just doing it wrong or if this is how it works.

I was expecting that, once I had logged onto the hotspot, that I would then have a network connection for all my apps and it would be just like being on my home WiFi. Unfortunately I didn't manage to get it working this way.

Firstly I went to my WiFi settings and selected the hotspot and it connected but nothing happened and any network apps I tried came up and said they had no network connection. That wasn't a huge surprise so I went to the browser and accessed www.google.com and, as I expected, after a brief delay the OpenZone software intercepted the page request and took me to the login screen where I then successfully logged in using my Orange credentials.

The above is fine if all I'd wanted to do was have a browsing session but I was hoping for a persistent data connection for all my apps. When I immediately quit the browser and went to the AppStore (just as a test of a networking application other than the browser) then the AppStore worked just fine but when I went off and did some other stuff (iBooks) then, when I next tried to access the network (Wikipedia accessed by the "Articles" app) the network was gone. When I then went back to the browser and tried to browse I got kicked back to the OpenZone login screen and had to login again.

So, what seems to be happening for me is that, once I leave the browser after logging in, the clock is ticking on a timeout so my data connection will only stay alive for a few minutes. Is this how it's supposed to work, i.e. OpenZone is really only useful for a concentrated browsing session and not for having a general purpose 3G-like background connection or was I missing something somewhere?

- Julian

 

[logicpro7]

Try the multi task feature so you keep the browser open, while you use the App store etc?

May work.

 

[ajnicho]

Try the multi task feature so you keep the browser open, while you use the App store etc?

May work.

Shouldnt have to, somethings not right, i never seem to have that problem when connecting to Openzone. Just make sure you're not connecting to a Homehub as apparently they broadcast as Openzone too but are not available to iphone customers

 

[JulianL]

Yeah, the browser was definitely in the quick launch area so it was multitasking, as far as that goes in the iOS world. The thought that it was a home hub that I was connected to is a good one because on the OpenZone hotspot finder there were more of those in my area than the "real" hotspots, but then again I did get presented with a login screen that included buttons to select whether I was on Orange/O2/Vodafone/etc so it looked right and I did get initial connectivity, it was just that it timed out.

I was using iCab as my browser rather than Safari though. In theory iCab has has an iOS 4 update so it should be multitasking but the other thing I could try is to initiate the login via Safari just in case.

I do suspect it's just a timeout issue though, maybe the hotspot I connected to had a very low (5 minute or so) inactivity timeout set.

- Julian