recently many places that used to be open wifi hotspots have become "china mobile hotspots" which are about one million times less useful. example: starbucks i

recently many places that used to be open wifi hotspots have become "china mobile hotspots" which are about one million times less useful. example: starbucks in Beijing used to just be a WEP'd wireless connection, you buy a cup of coffee and they give you the password, allowing you to go online for as long as you want. Now, you go online and are redirected to a horrifically buggy interface that requires you to input a China Mobile cell #, at which pt they will send you the login information as a text msg to your phone. All sorts of whack limitations (4hrs max, if you get d/c'd you can only log back on 3x and you get dc'd frequently...) It seems to me that this is very likely a decree from the govt, since wifi access tied to phone #'s is much less worrisome to them than anonymous wifi. could just be a money grab by china mobile though. in any case, I would imagine that these municipal spots will also use the phone # verification system, which totally undermines their usefulness.