Wifi .....

1. Hell no! You pay your broadband / ADSL supplier per month anyway - how you split / administer the signal through your router is your own business.

2. Depends on the hotspot. USA has more free wifi signals than UK as I understand it (although apparently Norwich in East Anglia has got city wide WiFi being rolled out). However I can access 15 networks in the 5 minute walk to my friends house from my home (gotta love people who just plug in their router and never secure it).

If you can connect to the hotspot and it's chargeable, they will direct your browser to a login / charging page requiring credit card / other payment details. Most chargeable ones are usually labelled appropriately in the SSID field.

Here's a search site that will give you an idea of what to expect; I've used LA (5 mile radius) as an example: http://www.jiwire.com/search-wifi-hotspots.htm?command=&ssid=&city_id=0&address=&hotspot_name=&city=Los+Angeles&location_type_id=0&country_id=1&provider_id=0&state_id=5&pay_free=both&zip=&radius=5.0