London to have city-wide Wi-Fi
Wi-fi for all in London?
London is apparently set to get city-wide Wi-Fi in time for the Olympics in 2012. Mayor Boris Johnson made the bold claim at the Google Zeitgeist event, but can he actually deliver?
The city-spanning Wi-Fi will apparently be delivered by new hotspots built into existing lamp post and bus stops. Johnson said: “Every lamp post and every bus stop will one day very soon, and before the 2012 Olympics, be Wi-Fi enabled.” A bold claim indeed.
The London wide Wi-Fi will use the existing electricity supply and wiring in those bus stops and lamp posts. While they’ll only cover a small area, the plan is to install thousands of them across the capital. 22 boroughs have already signed up to help deliver the scheme.
As well as providing abundant internet access for those visiting for the Olympics, the Wi-Fi plan will also be extended to assist commuters and local residents.
The Mayor also talked up a forthcoming iPhone app which will map the locations where you can pick up a bike as part of the London cycle hire scheme. He said: “Not only can you see where the bikes are you’ll also be able to tell how many bikes the local yobbos have left there.”
No details of exactly how much these schemes will cost yet. What do you think? An exciting vision for London, or pie in the sky from the blonde Mayor? have your say below…
User comments (8)
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Mumblemumble37519 May 2010
It's a great idea, but the trouble with this kind of WiFi is that it's often unsecured.
Report as inappropriateAnonymous20 May 2010
If Boris has thought this through he will have agreed with a 2012 official partner (BT ;) ) to provide a free WiMax network across London thereby not incurring any cost. Let's see....
Report as inappropriateKarsten21 September 2010
Springfield had its monoRail. Swindon is supposed to have its WiFi.. £450,000 and 1 year on.. 14 subscribers and still no wifi in town. No town or city should invest a single pound until the WiFi in Swindon is proven... it's the same dubious company behind it all. Will no say the Emporer is nekkid!
Report as inappropriateBill27 September 2010
Another failed attempt at muni-wifi in the making.. Why do they bother trying to do this?, its been tried and failed at all different scales all over the world. Wifi is not meant to be a large area mesh system. there are far to many interferers on the same band to make it usable along with only 3 non overlapping channels. If it did work of course, which it wouldn't, then everybody would be logging in to it and dumping their paid for fixed line services. Meanwhile, Fixed wireless, not Wifi, is a solution to high speed broadband for the many in the final third but the government don't think it is a worthy technology despite its fractional cost to implement compared to Fibre especially in rural areas. joined up government.... erm possibly not.
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John06 October 2010
Even Seville in Spain has WIFI, so come on Boris get a move on with our Capital
Report as inappropriateAnonymous13 November 2011
Who will pay for all this installation, then the techs to keep it running and the call centre for complaints about downed areas, then there is the problems of as stated above all those people that live there turning off the broadband supplier in the house, the bandwidth will be strangled to only allow surfing I should imagine. Well if London can afford it why not, wont happen tho :)
Report as inappropriateRory23 November 2011
There is a lamppost outside my house - should I log on to this and cancel my phone line and ISP connection? Google was not successful at making this work in the US. Mesh WiFi has huge bandwidth overheads and massive interference issues. It won't work. Nice idea though...
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