A favorite place of mine to hang out is the Shell Magallanes station, because it has free Wi-Fi. I buy a drink or two at Select (so at least I can claim I'm patronizing the establishment), find a table, then proceed to surf for free. And one time, stopping by from an all-night poker game on the way home, I was able to download a 200MB file in 10 mins! :-)
Unfortunately, there are some problems with the network. A few days ago, I was unable to connect to the network. So I resorted to manually assigning an IP and DNS addresses to my connection, and tried again. It worked! Happy ending right?
Well just now, I tried connecting to the same network. Didn't want to connect again, so I assigned the addresses, and it still didn't work. I did the last resort workaround: restarted my computer. And after that, it worked.
Huh?
First it works... then it doesn't... then it does... Huh?
Well, its free service and the owner can often opt not to continue offering their bandwidth for free. Want free wi-fi? Try the Starbucks at the ground floor of WalterMart (corner of Pasay Road and Pasong Tamo). I've been mooching their bandwidth for a week while waiting for my training to start. There's an AP named FREE_INTERNET and as it says, bandwidth is free and relatively fast. One time the FREE_INTERNET AP was on and off so I tried connecting to the Globe WIZ AP and WIZ allowed me to access the 'net for free!
Well, since WIZ is a paid service, your mileage may vary.
It would be nice if someone compiled a list of free hotspots around Metro Manila. Is there such a list ? Where can I find it ?
I don't know where to find such a list, but I can get the ball rolling by listing two free hotspots: the aforementioned Shell Magallanes, and some areas of Robertson's Galleria.