Another reason to keep my AMEX plat. Free Boingo Wifi

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As if I needed another reason to have or keep your AMEX platinum card, they just included another really cool benefit. Yes, you can no longer get into AA/DL lounges, but they certainly made up for that by nowΒ offering you free unlimited wifi via Boingo hotspots. You’re allowed to connect 4 devices simultaneously so you could potentially share this with a close friend too.

If you’re from a major metropolitan area, there should be Boingo hotspots everywhere you go. Being from New York city, I just wanted to take a look at how many hotspots there were. Just take a look at this map from their iOS app. I even have unverified hotspots filtered out. Most of Manhattan is covered.

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More and more subways, airports, lounges and cafes now use Boingo. I know several of the subway platforms I use are now Boingo Wifi enabled. (Sometimes its free for use after watching an ad too).

In this day and age where everyone is always messaging, tweeting, or uploading a picture to Instagram, I think this is a nice feature AMEX is adding to the benefits list of the AMEX platinum card. If you’re curious about others, I wrote about my favorite card and its benefits here.

For those of you who already have an AMEX personal or business card, sign up at https://amex.boingo.com/.

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You’ll see the splash page with the logo above.

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Enter your AMEX platinum card number to see if you’re eligible (I don’t see why you wouldn’t be).

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Then fill out your information and credentials.

Voila! You’re all set.

I’ve been testing the service for a couple of weeks now and places where I find it’s most helpful are NYC subway platforms. A lot of midtown platforms are now Boingo enabled, and sometimes the app automatically connects me, but sometimes I have to manually do it. It’s also helpful when I’ve needed to connect a device like and iPad that doesn’t have have cellular service.

I’m still a bit jealous of Hong Kong where there’s regular cell service in all the subway stations I entered and only about 5% here in NY though, but that’s a different discussion. Is this a feature you would make use of?

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