Has anyone here used WiFly and can report their experiences?
Is it possible that you need a credit card to use it, and since foreigners can’t get credit (or debit) cards here, we’re shut out?
I’m in Taipei county and, I guess I’m SOL? (Though here in Xindian extra-net has 5, 10, 20 megabit FTTH fiber). I mean, is it only operative in Taipei proper? How is the coverage? To me the amazing thing is that I haven’t seen any articles in the Taipei Times about how its up and running. Either that or its not running yet and the phone companies are just planting negative spin in the NYT.
(Feel free to merge this back into the sticky thread; just wanted to air it out first)
I have tried to connect a few times but get lost at the page full of Chinese writing. Will at some point get someone to show me how to do it as I can get a signal in the office which would be useful when the server is down.
I have used it a couple of times… although mostly at the airport. If you already use Hinet you do not need to create a new account.
I still have a 56K dialup account with Hinet (for emergencies), you can login with those details and you will be billed along with your existing account at the end of the month.
I believe you can also login using your ADSL username and password, the same is true you will be billed for usage along with your ADSL bill.
A couple of enterprising chaps in black shirts and myself have already securitised this, listed it on the San Chong alternative stockmarket, and we are running tiered franchised internet access services to spammers and other ne’er-do-wells using public bandwidth. Free enterprise. Gotta love it.
The Wifly portal site is a joke. Unprofessional, crappy design, poor navigation, poor instructions, poor content, lousy graphics, etc. Even the sign up form looks like it was written on a 1950’s typewriter. Funny that you have to fill it out online then FAX it in. On the PDA version, the password input box was hidden behind the popup soft-keyboard making it almost impossible to login. (last time i checked anyway, this bug may have been fixed).
I have sent Qware numerous emails offering to help them build a decent English portal site (for free as a public service no less), but they never responded. Not even a thanks, but no thanks email. So now (imho) instead of something useful and something Taipei city can be proud of, especially for international biz visitors, they have an almost unusable, embarrassment of a network. I’m really disappointed this service wasn’t better thought out from the beginning. Its a disgrace.
Also, I think a big problem for many people in Taipei is that they are tied into a 2 year contract with hinet already and do not want to pay for 2 broadband connections. (i do not think you can login with your hinet account on Wifly, maybe im wrong…) wifly.com.tw/wifly3/en/AboutWIFLY/WhatIsWIFLY/
I decided to give it a try so I bought the 500 NT cash card at Starbucks. That entitles you to 30 days of action. I mostly tried it on the MRT going from Xinyi to Muzha. Generally it worked when at stations but not in transit. It also works fine in lower Xinyi, around 101. The HiNet thingie is not WiFly, it’s their own network, accessible at e.g. Mc Donalds. To sign up you can first click on this little button that says “English” to make it easier.
Im sure hackers will LOVE this wifly thing… all they got to do is find a hidden area still accessable by wifly, then hack whatever like Pentagon or CIA or M$ or whatever, then totally ditch the computer by thermiting them or something… no way to trace who did it or find the house the connection came from. You need an account but then if a hacker is good enough to hack banks or CIA then they can easily clone or fake one…
And it’s not easier to sniff one of the thousands of open networks you can find walking through any modern city? People think that “this wireless router thing seems so convenient, and oh it’s so cheap, lets buy one” and then they just plug in the cable.
Anyone else know where the good signals are? I saw those things hanging from the intersections that are the actual hardware. I think there was a photo on one of the websites. I guess anywhere near those would be good. Any parks in Taipei or TienMu have a good signal?
Where did WIFLY’s English language web pages go? I thought half the idea of this system was that short term visitors to Taipei would be able to get online.
Also is there a technical reason why WIFLY doesn’t use a system like WPA to protect data sent by those using the service? I wouldn’t know as I’m no wireless expert.
