Zit Seng's Superwall

Have you ever wanted to share your 3G data connection with another device? You can easily setup a cabled or bluetooth connection for your notebook or PC. But what you wanted to offer 802.11 wireless connectivity to your friends’ notebooks or mobile phones? Well, there is a free software available that can turn your 3G mobile phone into a 802.11 wireless hotspot. Now you can easily “deploy” wireless internet connectivity wherever you go with just your mobile phone!

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The big question with the iPhone in Singapore is which telco will win exclusive rights to sell the handset here? It has been anyone’s guess since the iPhone was launched in mid-2007, and all three of SingTel, MobileOne and StarHub at some point or other seemed to be the leading favourite.

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One of the stumbling blocks to the use of Wireless@SG has to be the ease of logging in to the network. If you’ve found a Wireless@SG hotspot with working coverage and network access, you’re still faced with the challenge (though just a minor inconvenience) of manual login. Can we have automatic logins?

For phone users, you’d appreciate the difficulty of manual login from your phone’s browser: keyboard entry is difficult, the screen is small, etc. It seems mighty inconvenient if you just needed to quickly check something on a website. (Compare this with 3G, where your phone’s authentication to the network is automatic.)

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This year’s CES has seen the unveiling of a bunch of upcoming mobile phones from Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia and others. Many reports and reviews seem to have been drooled all over the new models (perhaps that’s that they’re all supposed to do), although I’d think they are overly hyped. They are interesting, no doubt; But earth-shattering, no.

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Let’s be honest, mobile phones have become a necessity, even in the armed forces. Nowadays with just about everyone carrying a camera phone, and the armed forces still in their archaic ages trying to ban camera phones… what to do when you go NS or ICT?

Ok, phones without cameras aren’t so rare yet. But let’s move along a bit. 3G is getting more prevalent. People like me want to web surf (with a proper HTML web browser), download emails, etc. No camera is fine, but can we still have all that?

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I just received a message today from SingTel informing that they are now upgrading the bundled data in our mobile broadband plans from 10GB to 50GB.

M1 recently had also sent their subscribers a somewhat similar message. In M1’s case, they were actually increasing the monthly cap of 10GB to 50GB. This means that they can now charge subscribers for up to 50GB of data usage. Their message, however, was easily misinterpreted by some subscribers as saying the bundled data has been increased to 50GB.

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I have heard about the rumoured N82 some time ago from various sources. The speculation was that it would be available next year. Well, it seems Nokia is in the season to push out tons of new Nseries models lately. First the N81 8GB, the N95 8GB, and now we have the N82.

I was originally eyeing the N82. Why? Because I wanted everything in the N95, and the N82 has everything the N95 has, except that it had an N73 form factor. Cool. Everything you’d want in a compact candy bar phone.

You can check out the N82 at www.nseries.com, a review from gsmarena, and some high resolution images from Nokia.

That’s how it is with captive portals, you are redirected to a web page to login, and there you have to type your username and password. Can you imagine how inconvenient it is to login from a mobile device such as a mobile phone or PDA? Even if it does have a tiny weenie keyboard? Is there an auto-login client for Wireless@SG? Can IDA sponsor someone to write a client for Symbian OS and Windows Mobile?

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After my previous phone contract ran out in April, I didn’t go get a new phone rightaway. There wasn’t anything particularly interesting then that struck my fancy. I was using an N73, which was a great phone, and although there were other “better” phones available, none were compelling upgrades. Until now, when the N95 8GB washed up on our shores.

The N73 is still a great phone. But the N95 8GB has come out to emerge as the new leader of the pack, after correcting some of the serious issues with the original N95.

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So I was at BPP this morning having breakfast, and I thought I’d login to Wireless@SG hoping to get some work done. The Wi-Fi signal was weak, and after finding my SSH connection getting stuck repeatedly, I eventually gave up. It made me think, again, how Wireless@SG is doomed to fail.

In case you didn’t know, Municipal Wi-Fi (i.e. city-wide Wi-Fi like what Singapore is doing) has failed in many cities in the US. Projects such as those in San Francisco, Houston, and St Louis are in trouble. Previously announced deployments in Chicago, Cincinnati, Anchorage and Alaska have been canceled.

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