Comment 5 for bug 574896

A workaround that I discovered while fumbling with things is to not create it in the more straight forward fashion.

Click KNetworkManager's system tray icon, click "Manage Connections". Under "Network Connections" on the left, click the "Wireless" tab on the right then click "Add....". At this point, you can freely name the "Connection name" and even "Scan" for SSIDs around and manually create the connection. I can't be certain if it's necessary to manually populate all of the settings or if some of them will be auto-populated.