Beijing’s rolling out city wide ‘free’ public WiFi, just surrender your phone number

Heads-up, locals: China’s Mobile , Unicom and Telecom carriers are building a city-wide public WiFi network across Beijing. Residents will enjoy free 2Mbps internet for as much as three years, in the event that they check in to the “My Beijing” service. Like most things which are gratis, there is a catch: you need to submit your phone number in exchange for access. Privacy enthusiasts aren’t thrilled on the idea, (you realize, since it’s backed by the Government ), though a representative said that the numbers would only be used for “identity authentication” — insinuating that they’d only be tracing individuals whose online activity might ” endanger social security. ” High-minded privacy concerns aside, there’s the very real danger of phones being bombarded with spam, let alone what happens when the 3 year trial period expires — users of the service could get stung with exorbitant costs to feed a public WiFi addiction.