TOT Hotspot @ Chiang Mai International Airport --- or --- How not to run a hotspot
We had a terrific holiday in Chiang Mai (more on that in a later post when the pictures are sorted out) and we are on our way back. To kill time at airports I like to catch up on email and my news reader, in short: I want WIFI. Luckily there seemed to be some. TOT Telecom provides a pay-for internet access. While by now I would expect WIFI as a free airport service this seemed to be better than nothing. A quick check showed, that there were no contact information except a Thai phone hotline (and no FAQ, Online form, contact email). I happily started the procurement process (for a ridiculous THB 200/hour). From there everything went downhill. Being cautious I use Firefox with the NoScript Plugin. So whenever the in order process a new base domain would be used that depends on JavaScript it wouldn't work. I started off:
So to recap: I had to trust 6 different hosts for their JavaScript to finally fail to gain WIFI access. Well I guess they don't make much money on their hotspots that way. At least investigating this killed the waiting time.
- http://portals.tothotspot:8080/home?CPURL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slashdot.org%2F
- http://www.tothotspot.th.com/ordernow.php
http://www.tothotspot.th.com/service3.php?BaTcHiD=1709 : Here the next button did require JavaScript. They just verified that you enter a username and a email (nicely disguised as password field
http://www.tothotspot.th.com/service4.php : Here the hand-off to the ePayment provider happens - https://www.krungsrimobile.com/merchant/payment.php?SomeMoreStuff : Without JavaScript active a nasty error message puts an end to the purchase: You are not authorized or Data encryption error !!! (Step1.2) .. Please contact your merchant's webmaster to investigate this error.
- https://www.krungsriepay.com/webapp/PaymentManager/CardBaseValidation. When enabling the page the year for the credit card (a dropdown field) wasn't populated. I had to allow https://seal.verisign.com/.
So to recap: I had to trust 6 different hosts for their JavaScript to finally fail to gain WIFI access. Well I guess they don't make much money on their hotspots that way. At least investigating this killed the waiting time.
Posted by Stephan H Wissel on 23 November 2007 | Comments (5) | categories: Buying Broadband