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Comment by tdonovic | Hacker News Reader

This is a very US centric way of looking at this. Currently sitting in a packed subway carriage in Busan, South Korea. There are carrier WIFI APs installed in every carriage. Their network is literally built to offload people onto wifi where possible, I presume to reduce congestion on not much or very directional spectrum in the tunnels. In this case, it makes perfect sense to push people onto their wifi. Not connecting to your own networks preferentially is a pita though. Seems like a really neat solution imo

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I think most Americans on here are concerned that if they're at home, and their neighbor has a carrier sponsored wifi hotspot, then their phone may prefer the neighbors hotspot to their own home network. Things like this could disrupt talking to local devices (airplay, homeassistant, etc).

Sort of. I can understand offloading to WiFi. I cannot understand preferring carrier WiFi hotspots over my own.

I live in Japan and first noticed this "feature" when I'd lose connection as every time I'd walk past a FamilyMart convenience store (which you can find every 3 blocks or so) it would connect to "0000docomo" and then immediately lose connection as I kept walking. Although in my case, disabling auto-join works fine.

Why would they install WiFi repeaters and not just 4G/5G microcells on the trains?

I suspect cell site density and that Wi-Fi infra doesn’t require the same regulatory permissions as a microcell. Wi-Fi is unlicensed.

Yeah I guess there may not be a regulatory framework for ambulatory cells

Cost seems like the most likely answer

Fair criticism. But can you defend blocking the user from manually disabling these networks?

I’d understand if I got a pop up saying “add these networks for the best experience”, I accepted them, etc.

I would have (upon detecting this problem) just removed them and gone about my day.

The problem here is that you are forced to use them with no opt-in and no way to disable it.

Why can't I remove the network from my phone then?

Makes "perfect" sense.

I can see how it can be a very useful feature – but why not let users decide if they want to keep enjoying it, or opt out of it for whatever reason? I can think of many valid ones.

I wish they’d install this in elevators here, too.

My office building‘s elevators have 5G signal, which makes much more sense as it avoids a hard handover between SSIDs/networks (or Wi-Fi and mobile data), which in turn has a much higher chance of not dropping calls.

I’d accept either, relative to what I have today, which is nothing.

If apple wants to add a second wifi radio to handle carrier offloading, and having it treat this second wifi radio as a cellular radio by another medium, sure.

but I should have fullllllllllllllllll fucking control over what wifi network my device connects to.

The fact it can connect to mobile data is only 10% of the device, and i don't see why connecting to a carriers mobile network should grant that carrier the ability to edit user settings like what wifi networks its allowed to connect to.

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