Boingo Announces Cheap Wi-Fi Plan For Phones

BARCELONA – Wi-Fi hotspot aggregator Boingo announced an unlimited-use, $7.95-per-month plan for its entire global network of 60,000 hotspots at the 3GSM cell phone trade show today.

The inexpensive plan will work on cell phones, PDAs, and a Belkin Wi-Fi phone—just not on laptops. It gets rid of the per-minute charges that laptop users suffer through at many international hotspots—it's truly $7.95 for unlimited use, according to Boingo's Jonathan Mendelson.

The first client for the plan will run on Windows Mobile 5 devices, Mendelson says, and should be downloadable today from mobile.boingo.com. Boingo's Wi-Fi connectivity client lets users enter their username and password once to connect to a wide range of Boingo and public hotspots. The client gets around the login pages that many hotspots require, which often don't work in mobile Web browsers.

Boingo is also working with Nokia to bring the client to Symbian phones, including the N80 and upcoming N95, Mendelson said. Existing N80 owners will be able to download the application, and new buyers may find it preloaded on their phones.

"You turn on your phone and you connect," Mendelson said. "You walk into an airport terminal and it just works—you can make a VOIP call, check your -mail, download music, or whatever you want."

One caveat there: Boingo is providing the network, not the applications. So if you want to make a voice-over-Internet call, you'll still have to pick an existing VoIP program like the thoroughly underwhelming Skype for Windows Mobile.

Further down the road, you could see the Boingo plan popping up on BREW phones such as those used by Verizon and Alltel. Last year, Boingo demonstrated the client running on a modified Kyocera phone. While taking that initiative further is up to device manufacturers, "if you go to SourceForge today, Boingo has the code where you could go ahead and develop a BREW application for a device," Mendelson said.

Boingo was founded by Sky Dayton, the CEO of wireless carrier Helio, so it makes sense that the two companies would work together to offer combined cellular/Wi-Fi plans. Mendelson said that "we're well aware of what Helio's doing in the market ... Sky sits on our board," but that he can't "comment publicly" on any work they're doing together.

More announcements will come soon, Mendelson said, with "additional phones" from "a lot of different device manufacturers" supporting Boingo's plan in the future.

The Boingo plan and client are available for Windows Mobile 5 devices and the Belkin Wi-Fi Phone for Skype today at mobile.boingo.com.