iPhone dominates Boingo airport access study

Is the data not a little biased toward iphone in the first place? Or perhaps the service provider? I have a contract phone with unlimited data usage so I never use Wi-Fi as I can connect through my service provider, email, internet, BBC iplayer etc are all covered (using a Nokia N97).

Boingo was also offering free wifi for iPhones, which would create an artificial disparity.

Not to mention that there was a hack going around about how to spoof Boingo into thinking your laptop was an iPhone and thus get that free wifi.

Their numbers are skewed to the point of being irrelevant.

Is it also possible that people with iPhones are more likely to surf on their phones while a Crackberry user is more likely to be a full on Road Warrior that has a laptop to work on?
Combine that with previous comments that ATT 3G sucks, so one is likely to purchase WiFi and we are getting somewhere...

I must agree: AT&T is the mobile service provider from Hell as far as the iPhone is concerned. Can they really be so arrogant (and/or stupid) that they don't even care what their subscribers think of them? Give me an iPhone that works on another network and I'll show you a mass exodus from AT&T that will make your head spin.

You have to include the AT&T lack of coverage factor. If my AT&T connection is strong, and 3G available, why would I need to connect to a public wifi network. Also, blackberry are more business tools, they would not risk sending there data over an airport wifi, and if on verizon or sprint, they probably have adequate connection speed.

If anything these shows a lack of coverage on AT&T's part.

This isn't exactly that surprising, most cell phone browsers won't allow you the ability to log-in, let alone pay for a browsing session, the iphone and now newer phones do. So most folks are using a laptop to access boingo. And if you so happen to have a cell phone with a real browser like the iphone has had for the last 2 years+ you would show up on the top of this list as well. I'd say it's more than likely the iphone users are at the top because they can, and others can not. Once the others can (e.g. have better web browsers allowing their users the same ability to log-in), it will probably equal out.

I'd really like to see the details of this report.

I'd say there's one more contributing factor: iPhone is on AT&T network, which sucks donkey balls, so you just _have_ to use wifi if you want to have a more or less reliable network connection. Other smartphones from other networks, like Verizon, work just fine on the cell network.

I've had Verizon broadband card for many years now, and before iPhone I was also using Motorola Razr v3 on Verizon's network, with EvDO support, and it was working 10 times faster _5 years ago_ than AT&T's 3G works now.

Boingo are awful. They charged me double what they were supposed to and never refunded it. I cancelled my account and explained why and they said to resolve this, I should phone someone in America. I'm in the UK, I don't want to call international phone rates to get 4 pounds back. They refused to deal with me by email.

Other than that, it's quite a good service.

This is not the complete picture, because many iPhones are set to auto-join a WiFi. Many WiFi surveys are based on MAC address connections and not active login connections.