Automatically connecting to the Wireless@SG hotspots

Thanks to a caustic comment some years ago to Lee Kuan Yew by some visitors to Singapore, we have a nation-wide free wifi network called “Wireless@SG”. It has been a constant pain to use and after much ridicule, someone, somewhere has decided to do the Right Thing (TM).

So, what was the problem? Well, when you come across a Wireless@SG hotspot, you have to log in via a browser before you can continue. Yes, you have to provide a username and password (yes, “someone” wants to track you). Move away from that hotspot to another Wireless@SG node, you have to log in again. No mobility. Wireless is about mobility. The people at IDA claim that they are constrained by “security requirements” from the Ministry of Home Affairs. On the other hand, the MHA folks I spoke with say otherwise. So, who dropped the ball? Whatever it is, we have wasted a tonne of tax-payer monies to run the Wireless@SG system for the last few years. There has not been a single report of the service levels of Wireless@SG and how IDA is accounting for the monies spent. I have no issue with providing a quality service using tax dollars. But to provide something that is annoying to use and having no public accountability is plain wrong.

Wireless@SG is still there and there appears to be some people using it. Most of them are NOT mobile – they tend to be seated at some fast food restaurant or coffee place etc.

Now, fast forward to 2010, it looks like the IDA has finally gotten around to make the Wireless@SG truly mobile. Why it took years, I cannot answer. Perhaps some boardroom battles had to be fought, who knows! Someone want to snitch? Post it anonymously if you must.

OK, so we now have proper mobility. Let’s look at the site that discusses this.

First, it suggests that you go to http://www.infocomm123.sg/wireless_at_sg/ssa#connect and gives you two options to connect – one via a piece of software (closed source) to connect your devices. Interestingly, they only list:

Supported Operating Systems
	- iPhone
	- Windows Mobile 6.1 and above
	- Windows XP/Vista/7
	- Mac OS 10.5 and above

as the supported OSes. No Fedora? Why?

Nevermind that. Let’s look at the 2nd option – the manual way of doing this.

Supported Operating Systems
	- iPhone
	- Windows Mobile 6.1 and above
	- Symbian S60 Windows XP/Vista/7
	- Mac OS 10.4 and above 
	- Blackberry OS 
	- Android 1.6 and above

again, no Fedora? They have Android so, how difficult is it to enable Fedora on it?

OK, let’s explore further. I had an account with iCellWireless and choosing thier column entry on Android, I get to see Android configuration document.

The information is trivial. This is all you need to do:

	- Network SSID: Wireless@SGx
	- Security: WPA Enterprise
	- EAP Type: PEAP
	- Sub Type: PEAPv0/MSCHAPv2

and then put in your Wireless@SG username@domain and password. I could not remember my iCell id (I have not used it for a long time) so I created a new one – sgatwireless@icellwireless.net. They needed me to provide my cellphone number to SMS the password. Why do they not provide a web site to retrieve the password?

Now from the info above, you can set this up on a Fedora machine (would be the same for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu, SuSE etc) as well as any other modern operating system.

Now that we have solved the single sign on problem with Wireless@SG, I want statistics on usage, support problems, etc etc etc.