I previously had no use for them because between international roaming on LTE and free hotspots at airports and free with status at a lot of hotels I figured it wasn't the bother.

I picked up the Amex deal and used it for the first time on a trip to Berlin and in Asia and wow - I didn't know what I didn't know.

The "free" wifi that you get at hotels is usually painfully slow and most of the time useless for anything serious. I was about to write of the wireless at I think was the Swissotel and decided to try Boingo just to see how it works since the hotel also supported it.

Wow, the speed went from barely 1mbit and choppy to 15mbit and smoking fast. Same wireless, same SSID, they obviously have different allocations for the pay services, which makes perfect sense.

Since they I've had the same experience in a bunch of international hotels, the free diamond level wifi offered to status people was lukewarm and the pay server via Boingo was smoking fast.

So, I never had it a care for years but now I'm a believer.