I was outside on my laptop tonight, and went to get on my normal wifi connection. Surprisingly, I attached to the feather/earthlink wifi and, for the first time, was able to have a decent connection-and it was free!

Has anyone else had this experience? I'm guessing that earthlink just let the gates open as they were leaving town during the transition to the new owners.

I believe that is supposed to be the case, yes.

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hehehehe...I've never seen such a simple response from you, adam. Did you read somewhere that its free for now until the new owners get their program together?

The press release I got from the new owners was a bit confusing...seemed that they wanted to focus on business and governmental business and any individual accounts would be something they worked out eventually.

Hehe, sorry to disappoint.

The new structure is supposed to be "free where you can get it" but will eventually have revenue generated via advertisements. (Maybe you have to have a banner ad open while you are connected? I don't know.)

I am guessing the plan is that, since it is free, they aren't under any obligation to make sure it works everywhere, which is good, since it doesn't.

They do plan to generate other revenue by offering a different level of services to larger institutions but not to residential.

That's the scoop as I know it.

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Thanks for the fill in...the press release seemed to basically say f- regular customers, we'll get to you when we do. Hell, if its free, I'm not questioning it.

I've always thought that people expected too much from a wifi signal; without the proper hardware, you're not going to get the signal in most philadelphia brick homes. Right now I'm sitting in a bar with wide windows so its works-but if I were in my warehouse I wouldn't get squat. Most people don't realize that when they sign up for a wifi service.

Hopefully they'll quickly correct the four signals running-it creates a questionable security problem when in a public area...they've got earthlinkwifi, FeatherByEarthlink, Feather, and WirelessPhiladelphia popping up on my wifi signal. I'm rather leary to do any password work on the signal unless I can backtrace the signal.

you think people would realize that they give you the Peplink to place it in a window or even an outdoor covered area

I think the phrase "line-of-sight" would have cleared things up immensely