[bryanthompson]

Pay who? Thats the issue. Pay your own provider, or pay theirs when you hook up?

Usually what happens is your device sniffs the network and gets connected to whatever gateway they offer. When I was at the airport in Lincoln, it popped up, asked if I wanted to join the network, then went to browse the net. When I opened up a site, the first thing I got was an agreement page from whoever owned the hotspot, in this case I think it was T-Mobile. I put my credit card # in there, checked the "I promise not to do naughty things on your network" box, and was on. You basically rent an IP for however long you pay.

Usually, if you're at one of these rentable hotspots, there are brochures around that tell you how to connect.