In the last year, millions of people have snapped up new smartphones, filled them with apps and promptly found out that they couldn’t actually use them.
The problem? Either the much-hyped 3G pipeline was clogged with other users, or the cell connection wasn’t even good enough to ring the 3G bell in the first place. AT&T users have had it the worst, thanks to the network’s iPhone data hogs.
Carriers are quickly adding high-speed network capacity, but in the meantime, AT&T and T-Mobile are throwing another lifeline to customers in the form of Wi-Fi. Both are making it easier to connect to wireless hot spots with their phones, in an effort to deliver fast data and clear calls in areas where neither might be possible.
In this respect, AT&T has been the most aggressive of any carrier. The company said this month that customers with a Windows Mobile phone could now connect freely at any of the company’s roughly 20,000 hot spots.
AT&T claims to sell more Windows Mobile phones than any other carrier, and with the introduction of Windows Mobile version 6.5 next month and new Windows phones like the HTC Touch Pro2, it stands to sell more. Now all Windows Mobile users can duck into a Starbucks, among the many other locations with AT&T Wi-Fi, and the phone will automatically route data and calls over a high-speed Internet connection.
Many people with iPhones and AT&T BlackBerrys don’t know it, but this perk has been available to them for months. The difficulty, of course, is finding a free hot spot when you need it.
Rather than roaming around and hoping to stumble into a Starbucks or an unlocked Wi-Fi signal, you can download one of the many hot-spot locating apps.
I found JiWire’s free Wi-Fi Finder iPhone app particularly useful. The software sniffs out your location and offers a list of nearby hot spots, free and paid. If you’re a customer of one of the big Wi-Fi networks, like iPass, Boingo or AT&T, the app will tell you where to find those.
Unfortunately, no comparable app exists for BlackBerrys or Windows Mobile phones. Users of those devices can download apps that help find free hot spots (like Free Wi-Fi Cafe Spots, for $3 on BlackBerry’s App World). Otherwise, you need to get online before leaving home, and make a list of hot spots you can use while on the road.
AT&T says its free Wi-Fi initiative isn’t a response to a recent avalanche of complaints from iPhone users that they cannot connect via 3G. Still, Jeff Bradley, the company’s senior vice president of devices, said that if more AT&T users shifted to Wi-Fi, the performance of the 3G network should improve.
T-Mobile, too, has put significant emphasis on Wi-Fi, which is good for users, because T-Mobile’s coverage quality trails that of its competitors in most regions.
T-Mobile’s HotSpot Network has more than 10,000 locations in the United States, thanks to roaming agreements with Boingo and AT&T, so the network covers Starbucks, many major airports and FedEx Kinko’s stores, among others. As with AT&T, the connection costs are included in a subscriber’s monthly data plan.
Some T-Mobile phones, like the MyTouch 3G or the G1, have available applications that will help users find a hot spot. These so-called Google phones, which operate on Google’s Android software platform, are fairly well served, in this respect, with T-Mobile’s HotSpot Locator app (free, in the Android Market).
The app garnered some harsh early reviews for frequent crashes, but T-Mobile recently said the problems had been fixed. In recent tests I experienced no problems.
Connecting to a hot spot is generally as easy as it is on AT&T. If you have an Android phone, like the MyTouch 3G or the G1, T-Mobile’s affiliated Wi-Fi networks will recognize your phone and automatically log you on. Other smartphones require users to log in with their phone number, at least initially. If you tweak the phone’s settings, it will log in automatically thereafter.
For an additional $10 a month, T-Mobile subscribers can make unlimited calls from any hot spot without racking up cellphone charges. On my tests, calls showed good voice quality, with no noticeable difference from the cellular calls on T-Mobile’s network.
Just 18 of T-Mobile’s 30 Wi-Fi capable phones can make calls this way, though, and the Android phones are not on that list. So check T-Mobile’s Web site to see if your phone qualifies.
Verizon, the nation’s biggest wireless carrier, has no similar Wi-Fi initiative, which is perhaps understandable since it has few Wi-Fi-enabled phones. And Sprint has no nationwide Wi-Fi initiative to speak of, either.
Sprint does have a horse in the wireless race, however. The company has invested in Clearwire Communications, a company that is rolling out WiMax, a technology that covers entire cities in a wireless Internet cloud.
This year, Clearwire began introducing its WiMax service in Baltimore and Las Vegas, and last month added Boise, Idaho; Bellingham, Wash.; and Portland, Ore., among other cities. By the end of next year, WiMax coverage will be available in New York, San Francisco and most of Texas, among other places.
Existing Sprint subscribers receive no discounts when they use the network. You can subscribe to the Mobile broadband service for $60 a month, and connect in any city where Sprint’s WiMax service is available, or users can pay $10 to connect for 24 hours.
As an alternative, Sprint and Verizon Wireless also sell Novatel’s MiFi 2200 ($100 with a two-year contract), a pocket-size device that converts a cellular signal into a Wi-Fi signal, which you can share with up to five devices nearby.
You need to be in an area with good cellular coverage for it to be of much use, so there’s little logic in owning one just to connect your phone to Wi-Fi. But if your circle of friends includes data-hogging iPhone users who can never seem to get on AT&T’s 3G network, you could probably extort a cup of coffee or two from them in exchange for a Wi-Fi fix.
