High Wi-Fi Access Prices At Euro Conventions
A lot of attendees at the recent 3GSM and CeBIT conferences in Europe got burned by the high prices of Wi-Fi access charged at these shows. It seems that in the US, we have been a little more fortunate, as T-Mobile chose to give away Wi-Fi access at CTIA in exchange for some user information. Citing my earlier article, this link from TheFeature tells us that the cost of Wi-Fi at CeBIT was expected to be 85 Euros a day! So, although I wouldn’t advocate breaking a User Agreement, here’s a way someone could fight back at ridiculous rates at a show: Pay for one access and then FREELY SHARE out the Internet service over another WiFi channel. A laptop with two Wi-Fi cards, WindowsXP, and more time than sense is all it takes. If a user enables “Internet Connection Sharing” on the WiFi adapter connected to the Hotspot, and then freely shares the connection out through the second WiFi card, he can be a Robin Hood of WiFi. It can also be done through the ethernet port using an Access Point. Sure, there’s a security risk to allowing all that traffic through your laptop, so you have to have a taste for risk and be a semi-anarchist to ever try this. But at 85 Euros for WiFi, anarchy starts to sound reasonable.
