Do customers provide (some) BT hot-spots?
This is what happened.
I use Skype to talk to landlines (and that includes US mobiles) for 5 quid or so a month. Very handy. For a couple of days I was getting dropped calls after a few moments. Various clues made me think it was my connection to the world rather than the laptop or the home hub.
I ran inSSIDer and it showed my strong signal BTHub3-FMT4 and BTWiFi with FON occupying ch 11. They vie with each other for first place with no other contenders. Ah, thinks I, a BT hot spot is knocking out my signal. A man on BT support agreed and suggested changing channels. Today, I got around to it, but to my surprise the other signal followed me down to (a now fixed) ch4. I called India again. Not so, says he. But that would be one hell of a coincidence, says I. He had three extended talks with his supervisor. I could in no way influence the hot-spot's transmission channel. Okay, but it hadn't budged off 11 for weeks. The moment I changed, it changed.
Two things. Is it what its name implies? Certainly if I log onto it, I get offered Wi-Fi at so much per hour/day etc.
It happened that for a moment, this other (unsecured) signal hopped to 6 and was much stronger. It soon settled back on my spot at my signal's strength. That kind of belies me changing it, but the odds . . .
I'm not sure I believe him - or his supervisor, but I questioned him (vigorously) about BT using customer's houses to provide hot-spots for others. Do they? If so, what affect does it have on one's bandwidth? At first, he assured me it wouldn't cost us anything, and then said it doesn't happen. Mmmm . . .