Show HN: App recommending free Wifi based on hotspot heuristics and crowd-input

[secure]

Out of curiosity, what is your reason for using wifi hotspots in today’s world?

Personally, I don’t bother connecting to a wifi network anymore (except when I’m at home or at work) because the mobile network is just so fast and convenient.

Even when abroad, I just buy a local SIM card and use that.

[icebraining]

Cost. Monthly data plans are a waste (I spend weeks, sometimes months, without needing mobile access) and pre-paid packages are limited and expensive.

I could certainly afford them, but considering that Wifi is plentiful where I live, it's not worth it.

[rpbertp13]

Cellular data networks in many parts of the world deliver incredibly slow speeds. In those places, the hassle of finding and connecting to a WiFi hotspot is often worth it. I'm currently traveling in the Philippines and malls, restaurants and cafes commonly offer WiFi to attract customers, and it works.

Even when the local network is fast, buying a SIM card may not be an option if your phone is locked and under contract, which is very common for US users.

[untog]

You know how I know you live in a major metropolitan area and have a good deal of disposable income?

[brendan_gill]

In the user interviews we carried out some of the key use cases we've found for Wifi use are:

- People without unlimited data plans who would prefer to preserve data on their mobile plan

- People travelling abroad and want to avoid roaming fees (although I'm partial to a local sim also, for many this is quite technical)

- People who want to find a nice cafe to use their laptop

- Faster internet (Much of the world can't rely on fast LTE networks for example)

- Connectivity in places where there's no mobile signal (e.g. underground restaurants, bars etc).

[nwatson]

This would be useful for a not-so-monetizable crowd ... the modern "hobo" population: http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/572691/Homeless-hobo-cod... ... and anyone else who cannot afford or choose not to pay for extensive data plans.

[wslh]

Seems like you don't travel to the countries with poor/oversubscribed mobile coverage (i.e: Argentina).

[xexers]

Is there a rating in the app that says "% of people who were actually able to get online".

I've been to many places where they say there is "WiFi", but it's either not free, difficult to get on, or only free for certain people.

[brendan_gill]

Indeed - this is exactly the challenge we are working on. In future versions I think we will provide more detail on the classifications (e.g. 6 out of 7 users marked this as Free).

[brendan_gill]

Hi all - I'm one of the founders of OpenSignal and wanted to add some technical detail on what we're doing here - It's a V1 (although 4 years in the making!) and would love any feedback.

The source of the Wifi database is our existing app OpenSignal [1] which crowdsources data on the coverage of mobile networks. We also collect data on Wifi hotspots and have since mapped over 500 million of these since 2010. Although we can automatically detect if a password is required to connect, determining if it's free or not is another challenge as there are plenty of non password protected walled-garden hotspots and plenty of (what we consider) free hotspots where you still need to find out the password (e.g. cafes, restaurants etc).

So our algorithm looks at a number of heuristics of each hotspots including (but not limited to):

- Are there clues in the SSID (e.g. does it mention +ve keywords like 'free', 'cafe' or -ve keywords like 'staff', 'private', 'employees' etc).

- Is it part of a wider network that we know more about (e.g. 'ATT-wifi', 'Starbucks-Wifi' etc)

- Do we know what kind of place it is? (e.g. if it's a cafe, is it more or less likely to be free?)

- Is there a walled-garden behind the hotspot (we attempt some automatic background checking of this similar to the way Android & iOS will do this on new hotspots).

- How many distinct users have we detected connecting to a particular hotspot (If many, is that a sign it's a public place?)

This is just a sample - we look at over 20 different heuristics on each Wifi, none of which are individually conclusive, but together give us a strong indication on whether a Wifi hotspot is free or not.

However, it's unlikely we will ever be able to completely accurately classify free Wifi through a purely hueristic algorithm which is why with this new app we are asking for user input to help us curate this algorithm. Not only can users help tweak any hotspots that we have classified incorrectly, but we can train our algorithms to be smarter by learning from their input. We believe that this dual approach of an automated algorithm combined with manual curation from the crowd is the best way to solve a problem like this in the long run (not least because we didn't want to provide users with a blank canvas and ask them to classify Wifi without us doing any of the hard work first!).

Any feedback much appreciated!

[1] http://opensignal.com

EDIT: Tweaked line formatting

[djm_]

Nice to see London on a screenshot and not San Francisco for once! Congrats on the launch.

[stevewilhelm]

If you are in Europe, take a look at the FON service. [1]

[1] http://maps.fon.com/en

[icebraining]

+1. Here in Portugal we're covered in FON hotspots, thanks to our biggest ISP including it in their routers. Buying a Fonera router was the best $40 I've ever spent - I know have Wifi on almost every populated street of the country.

[navpatel]

I'm traveling in Argentina right now, and I downloaded the app before heading out. Then saw this screen: http://i.imgur.com/QvaIf0w.png while trying to use it. ... doesn't this defeat the original purpose of the app?

[pornel]

Is there a way to try Android beta without going anywhere near Google+? (I'm banned from + for using a pseudonym).

[milankragujevic]

I uploaded a copy of the apk for you. If it's okay with the developers.. link: http://milankragujevic.com/uploads/com.opensignal.wifi-v0.09...

[brendan_gill]

Could you shoot us an email? We can probably send you the APK file: http://opensignal.com/blog/contact/

[ekianjo]

Nice, but isn't it a safety risk to log on a Wifi network you know nothing about ? You should probably warn users not to do any kind of sensitive browsing on it.

[brendan_gill]

Indeed, there are risks involved, but I'd argue that connecting to public Wifi is a pretty common existing habit already. There are good ways to stay protected though whilst doing this e.g. using a VPN.

[nodata]

Does it work offline?

[brendan_gill]

Offline Wifi packs (w/ maps!) is one of the top priorities on our development roadmap

[nbevans]

+1 Seems pointless if it doesn't.

[gondo]

i just wanted to add free wifi hotspot but i refuse to sign in with facebook. please add different kind of login.

[brendan_gill]

We'll be adding sign-in via email soon.

[fcoury]

Tried adding one hotspot and got "Sorry! We didn't manage to get a response from the server".

[andreaskam]

Typed in wifimapper on my iPhone here in the UK. It says no results. Have you checked that?

[cleis]

It takes a while for the App Store to index new apps for search (which is annoying), but the app is live! You can see it here - https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/wifimapper-free-wifi-maps/id....

[sz4kerto]

Microsoft WiFi Sense does something very similar on Windows Phones.

[brendan_gill]

There are a number of others building hotspot databases like this but mainly taking a purely automatic, heuristic approach. Our plan is to augment this with an engaged community of users who can help curate the database further in a way that isn't possible through an automated-only approach. See my comment below for more details.

[mrmondo]

says 'server offline' in Melbourne, Australia

[pyvpx]

it's a shame opensignal isn't more like openstreetmap with its dataset.