lstanbul Senin 4+

Impossible to log in to the WiFi

Istanbul’s municipality is offering free WiFi for locals and tourists. Until there, it’s all good.
When I tried to log in to the WiFi network, it automatically sent me to a website to register. There’s an option to select “English”, and it works, however the important part of the texts are actually photos, and the artificial intelligence in the app is not developed enough to translate the text within the photo (they could have at least done something that when you click in “english” it also loads a photo with the text in english, but no. They didn’t.
So after the hit or miss to interpret/guess where to register and create an account, I specifically clicked on “tourist” because I don’t have a Turkish ID. They let me register with my passport and even sent me an SMS to confirm my phone number (the country code was selected from a drop-down menu) and also send you the password on SMS. Until there, it’s all good.

After receiving the sms, you need to download an app. Well, the problem is that if you are connecting to the network to have WiFi is because you need WiFi first, even to download the app you need it. Some networks allow you to at least connect to the AppStore to download the app, but this one wouldn’t.

“Ok”, I’ll download the app tonight when I get to the hotel, I said.

Back at the hotel, I download the app, which is in Turkish. I checked the settings and even if you can select 3 languages (Turkish, English and german), it doesn’t matter what you click it will always be Turkish.
But I had Google translate so I managed to understand more or less.

The problem is that, when you try to log in with the credentials you entered before (tourist passport + phone number from another country) it won’t let you. The country code is pre-selected and there’s no place to select “tourist” as there was when I created the account when I was automatically redirected. There’s no place to enter a passport number with an alphanumeric format. I turned the app upside down, no way to do it.

I also cannot go back to the registration because on the app, only locals can register.

So basically, the connection environment that pops up when you connect to the WiFi, does not match with the connection environment in the app. It’s impossible to connect, doesn’t matter what you do.