How many of you in American big cities are still on dialup?
London to be totally Wi-Fi-enabled
The City of London Corporation is all set to have Wi-Fi network in place covering the entire city. The project is being undertaken by the corporation in partnership with a private Wi-Fi firm, The Cloud. It is expected to be implemented in full in the next few months.
The Cloud, which will install the hardware and equipment, will make use of street furniture like the lamp posts and street signs for the purpose.
The courts will tie this issue up for years here in the U.S.
Portland, Oregon is in a “request for bid” phase of something similar.
Telcos keep saying “…just wait a while longer, we’ll get around to it…” 🙁
I’m starting to miss the OLD at&t … they had the juice and the guts to do something like this. We may have paid more but we got more or at least it seemed like it.
Now the piece of the pie is too small to allow for the huge capitol investment. And the telco’s have lost the will to take on any more risk.
I think if anyone put’s a really good service out there they will win big.
right?
The Telco is this country are too greedy , they rather buy a congressman than to invest for the good of the people
I’m not sure if this refers to ALL of London. References to the City of London usually refer to the financial district, which is also the older area (although not necessarily historic, since most of it was comprehensively bombed during WW2). So, visitors may get Wi-Fi around St. Pauls Cathedral, but maybe not in the entertainment areas of the West End. Just my guess, for what it’s worth.
While what I shall say can be considered “preaching to the choir” (to the readers of a tech blog); all I can say is that the Telcos of the USA are spending millions and millions of dollars via Lobbysts to have all forms of US Government (state, local and federal) cripple all forms of broadband; both in speed and cost. I am a businessman; and have no problems with a company making profit BUT I vile at the idea of an industry buying their way via “legal bribes” from telco monopolies \ What can we each do? Email our elected officials : at the local; state, and federal levels that we care about issue (and will remember during the 2006 elections (which are poised to be a very big deal).
It’s sad that the US is now like #15 in the world when in comes to broadband deployment. It’s sad that Verizon was able “to buy” the State of PA to enact LAWS (yes, actual LAW) that prevents other cities in Pennsylvania to offer the same type of “cheap/free City Wide WiFi that Philadelphia will be offering.
…prevents other cities in Pennsylvania to offer the same type of “cheap/free City Wide WiFi that Philadelphia will be offering.
An not just in Pennsylvannia .. I’m pretty sure Portland is putting their hoped-for system out to bid, to avoid the court battles over building it themselves.
“Wireless Heaven”?? You Dvorak bloggers really come up with some idiotic headlines.
If you’re so foolish as to be lacking any skepticism, you still might have noticed that the article says it’ll supply connectivity to 350K “workers”. If you think that’s a large number, perhaps you didn’t know London has a population of about, oh, 14 million. What portion of its working population will be able to use this? Not much. And why just “workers”? What about residents? By the way, note it’s not free or anything either. Wonder how much it costs? You don’t know do you?
Oh by the way, this plan will be effected by installing 150 “beacons”? Really? What does that mean? If I take my sniffer on a walk I bet I’ll pick up 150 WiFi hubs in just my suburban neighborhood. That’s supposed to cover London?
Of course you might want to show some skepticism. Perhaps it’s not so easy to stick WiFi hubs on every lightpole in central London. Maybe we should see how things are going in a couple of months, instead of completely uncritically accepting something just because it allows you to be a freakin’ sophomore and bash the U.S. Ooh, how avant garde, typical Dvorak Blogging.
I actually travel to the UK, and knowing Brits as well as I do now, bet you 10 punds that if you pull a Londoner off the street and show them this article, they’ll dismiss the whole thing as hogwash. Then they’ll tell you how crappy service is everywhere, how expensive everything is, how incredibly insane traffic is, and how they have to wait in lines all the time.
Oh, and I have yet to find free WiFi there anywhere BTW — and the hotels try to ream you for access (as they do when you need to wash socks). Whereas here in the rubelike U.S., I actually get free open WiFi just about everywhere it’s occured to me that I might want to pop out my notebook. Strange.
Kevin, you certainly sound as if you spend a bit of time in London. Probably around Highbury with that level of whining.
You already have wi-fi across most of the “west end” of london.
But yes, this does just refer to The City, which is basically a square mile of london.
Random fact about that part of london – if you dig down there is a layer of earth which is stained rust-red from the blood that was spilt by Bodica when she slaughtered all of london. Crazy, but true.
I listened with great interest in your comments about possible government regulation or at least oversight of access to the internet. Equal access to information is critical to every American as well as every human on the planet. The easiet way to oppress a population is to restrict free access to information, ask the Chinese. To me this is like the fast pipe proposed to serve google and other major users. It is all about controlling the access to information, and for the wrong reasons; profit.
Chris said:
“If it’s being at all subsidized with taxpayer money, then that’s an entirely different story. We could do that to. But what do you want to give up to get it?”
mmmm … about 3 months of the war should do the trick nicely.
This is a much more limited network than it might first appear. The City of London is only one square mile. It is the financial district, often refered to as “The City”. What most people think of as London is in fact the Greater London Area, and is composed of a number of Cities and Boroughs.
More money flows through “The City” than any other financial district and the real estate in that square mile is among the most expensive in the world.
It might also interest some to know that there aren’t a great number “residents” in the City of London”.
“Kevin” might travel to London a lot, but he doesn’t know all that much about it.
To those above — my office is in the “City of London”. The City of London does refer to the financial district (here’s a map: http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/Corporation/maps/ ) – and regarding the Wifi, it’s not free, but run by Cloudspace. There are tons of other options – all charged for. But that said, near my home in St Johns Wood (just NW of Central London), I do have the ability to get high speed free wifi from the Westminster council, although I believe this is now also changing to a charged for service run by BT. I think anyone who wants wifi here will be fine paying for it (we’re used to that), but should a tourist need free internet, they can go to libraries – I know that most City of London libraries offer free internet.
Doug,
Make that 1 week of money for the war to offer Wi-Fi to 90% of the population of the U.S.
Me-
Three months and we could give everyone a VOIP handset and/or a PSP …
Doug
Tokyo and Taipei are wireless. How come a place like NYC can’t? This is utter trash. We pay way too much for far too little. We’re getting ripped by the Telcos’.
Sounds like a great deal for Cloud. They managed to get themselves a good government contract. Much more stable when it’s taxpayer dollars going into the bottom line.
>>Whereas here in the rubelike U.S., I actually get free open WiFi just
>>about everywhere it’s occured to me that I might want to pop out my
>>notebook.
Free WiFi??? Guess you don’t go to hotels or airports, huh?