Turn Your Symbian Smartphone into a Mini Wi-Fi Hotspots

Finland based software house, Joikusoft says that it has developed an application for Symbian Series 60 based smartphones which converts them into a Wi-Fi hotspot, using 3G cellular for the backhaul connection. When turned on, external WLAN devices can discover the open JoikuSpot and establish internet connection wirelessly using the mobile phone's 3G internet connection.

Joikusoft says that their software application also presents a new type of a business opportunity for network operators, saying that JoikuSpot encourages its users to upgrade their mobile data plans to faster and fixed monthly plans, and usage of JoikuSpot sizeably improves the user data ARPU.

Reading the instruction manual for the software though makes no mention of encrypted usage via conventional WEP/WPA or the ability to restrict users by computer MAC address. That means anyone in range can connect to the Wi-Fi hotspot and use the internet access. As the software is still in Beta, we can presume that this necessary feature would be added in the near future.

JoikuSpot is based on Joikusoft's patent pending technology, and the limited beta version for Symbian OS unveiled today is called JoikuSpot Light.

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