tenthofjune

I take most TV adverts with a pinch of salt but BT’s current broadband advert contains a completely irrelevant claim. It claims that their service provides “unbeatable wireless speed” in the UK. This is the equivalent of your electricity provider claiming their electricity produces warmer light or your gas provider saying it heats your room more efficiently.

Which wireless router or access point (if I choose to actually use wireless) is up to the customer and will therefore determine the speed.

This claim obviously plays on the consumer broadband mentality that suggests you are tied to the router provided by the ISP. Even if BT’s router is wireless-n it would be foolish to choose your ISP based on the router they provide.

At any rate, a fantastic wireless speed is irrelevent if the connection provided by BT is only a fraction of that.

Following my last post on open wireless access points, have a look at this article by Dick Morrell.

On a short walk with my WiFi enabled Palm recently, I was amazed to find so many open wireless access points.
While some of these are in residential areas, most surprising was the number of businesses leaving themselves wide open. Whoever had set them up had gone as far as changing the SSID to the business name (making it even easier to see where the signal was coming from) but had failed to enable even simple security.
No doubt, these businesses will have a firewall on their internet connection, but having an open wireless access point is like leaving the back door to the shop open.