Hello
just wanted anybody's "know how" about WI FI hotspots.....?
After doing some googling and reading i learned that Hotspots can come
from variuos sources.
1) THe TELCO can operate a hard wired "hotspot" direct from a radio
transmitter embedded in phone booth. THis is pretty popular in my country. Or a pole
on the side of the street.
2) Hotspots can come from Businesses that have signed up a deal with
a TELCO where the Telco gives them free DSL if they agree to beam out
a hotspot 24 hours per day from the router box antenna into the street... for passers by.
3) There is a Home hotspot in your house. That is when your router box
receives it's wired DSL signal and beams that wi-fi signal out using antenna
on it's rear...... so that you can be an upstairs bedroom and log onto the
DSL signal over WI FI using a wi-fi enabled laptop.
4) There are cases where you just convert your cell phone into a hotspot
so that people around you with WI FI devices can log-in over WI FI to the 3G or 4G internet signal that your handset is "hotspotting" . Or the signal you are
hotspotting can be WI FI entering your handset .....which you then hotspot out.
5) Airport hotspots etc.
6) In my case, and i am sure many other telco's are similar....my home router box acts as a "hotspot" for passers by in the street. It grabs a small portion of my copper wire DSL signal and beams it out as WI FI for passers by who PAY for the wi fi signal.
(i can opt IN or OUT of this feature.....my choice)
The way this system works is pretty simple and i believe what happens is the street contains a "mothership" router....(a company's router) and that box is beaming out a Hotspot for passers by of combined portions of the company's wired DSL signal with portions of bandwidth the mothership has gathered from home router boxes like mine.
how
The mothership router box listens for incoming FREE wi fi bandwidth from boxes like my home box. The mothership listens to maybe 20 home-boxes in this street and throws together all of that free WI FI bandwidth with some of it's own DSL wired bandwidth to form a swimming pool of WI FI for passers by to Log into at a PRICE.
The passer by gets whatever bandwidth the pool can afford to give them as they jump in for a swim. (8 dollars per hour)
(usually from 0.5 Mbps to about 4 or 5 Mbps)
but my questions are about the core meaning of hotspotting.
As far as the name implies "Hotspot" it gives an impression to me that
it's a somewhat "random" affair in the sense that it "may" be there one
day and maybe not very strong the following week.
i wondered about this in my case since my DSL deal with my telco gives
me free unlimited access to 14 million hotspots. I wondered if, as a customer,
do i have any rights to request that those hotspots actually function correctly
at all times?
Why this question?....well sometimes hotspots are good but they can go very low
when the business beaming the hotspot opens its doors at 9 am.....at 5.30 pm when the business closes..... the good signal somehow returns again.
In that particular example above the signal follows a path to ME which never ever changes and it's no function of weather or ordinance or any outside entities interfering with it. The path remains as it is in exactly the same form 24 hours per day. (Ten meters from me to the router and two walls.) (never ever changes) The company also power the router 24 hours per day and have done for nearly a decade.
It's clear to me that something the company DO inside the premises at opening time
limits the hotspot signal by quite some measure.....and i think it's heating systems.
My question to you is this........ do you know if the company have any obligation to the telco above just leaving the router on 24 hours?.
I believe they DO have extra obligation.
The hotspot contract they sign will stipulate that the hotspot signal must reach 30 meter radius at all times. The example mentioned above is very difficult to manage because my street has a "no parking zone" so very few people ever stop by to pay the 8 bucks and get onto the wi fi hotspot. The company themselves don't notice degrading since smartphones still receive the WI FI hotspot inside the premises.
(although the signal is very degraded OUTSIDE....the company don't know it inside)
My belief is that company's must meet 30 meter obligations at all times. THat's the WI FI contract they signed.
But i feel that many company's don't meet it all the time.
It can take quite some time for a wi fi hotspot problem to be remedied by a company.
I wonder if there is anyway that the Telco checks
that a hotspot is working each 24 hours?......or does it rely on customers like me to phone them and complain?
It's hard to imagine HOW the telco could check by measuring a 30 meter WI FI radius while not being there?
There are many other similar examples to the one above. ......but the example above is a very good example since there are no grey areas. I am 100 percent certain that the company somehow impedes the hotspot signal for large portions of time without even knowing this.
Here below is a scenario that perhaps telco's and company's never considered.
Scenario
When a telco and a company agree to beam-out a WI FI hotspot it may be summer when that contract is signed. Sure the WI FI is tested and the hotspot works fine. But this can drastically change in winter when people start to employ lots of electrical items and heating.
I am wondering what rights do i have as a consumer? my belief is that i don't have any rights and hotspots are mearely chance things...if you receive a signal then eureka. If that same signal is bad next week ...bad luck.
But i wonder, what obligation do hotspot company's have to the telco they signed up with....?. .......and how is the quality of the WI FI hotspot regularly checked?
The information above is not easy to come by. THe general public don't really understand it that much.
Masses of DSL consumers don't have a clue that their own router box is acting as a WI FI hotspot for the general public in the street below. (on a different WI FI channel)
They don't even know this fact..... YEARS .....after having the dsl contract.
When they eventually discover this fact, many people are dismayed, file law suits against the telco and leave the telco. (These people were never careful enough when reading the small print of their DSL contract which clearly stated they would be, by default, optionally OPTED INTO the telco wi fi system)
Vince.
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