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Toronto Hydro Telecom’s launch of its free wireless Internet service in the city’s financial district yesterday puts Toronto at the forefront of hundreds of other North American municipalities that are deploying municipal wireless (or WiFi) networks. While we applaud Toronto Hydro Telecom for the bold vision and ambitious scope of this project, the plan to treat it as a commercial, profit-making business seriously undermines its potential as an innovative public service bringing widespread benefits to Torontonians.[...]

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Today was the official launch for Toronto Hydro Telecom’s One Zone in the downtown core. I wasn’t able to go, but Edward went, and sent some photos and an excellent commentary right after the launch event concluded.

One of the comments he makes, answers a question many of us at Wireless Toronto get when discussing Wi-Fi (commercial or otherwise) in Toronto:

One Zone and WT are in different ‘businesses.’ WT exists to provide free-to-end-user service in indoor and outdoor publicly accessible spaces, with the low-cost service sponsored by the site host or an interested third-party, such as the South St. Lawrence Tenant’s Association at St. Lawrence Market, Kijiji and the Friends of Dufferin Grove and Dufferin Grove Park, or Dundas Square. One Zone is in the business (after the free trial period) of selling a competitively priced WiFi service to single end users in the downtown core ($5 per hour, $10 per day, $29+ per month).

He also reports his first impressions as a user, and well, nobody’s perfect, right? As with other newly launched citywide networks (see Peter Cochrane’s description of his user experience with the Norwich network), THT’s “OneZone” appears to have a few glitches to work out in terms of signal strength and speed.

Anyhow, read on for Edward’s full report… (Thanks Edward!)

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After¬†a 2-month delay, THT is¬†(officially) launching the 1st phase of their wi-fi network in the downtown financial district.¬† Wednesday’s launch at the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) in the heart of Toronto’s financial core is emblematic of THT’s (and other u-telcos’)¬†enterprise-oriented strategy.¬†

Toronto Hydro Telecom Goes Live with Phase 1 of Canada’s Largest WiFi Network in Toronto’s Financial Core.

WHEN:     WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2006
               11 am Р12 noon

WHERE:    TSX Broadcast Centre
               The Exchange Tower
               130 King Street West

WHO:       Clare Copeland, Chair, Board of Directors, Toronto Hydro Corporation
               David Miller, Mayor, City of Toronto
               David Dobbin, President, Toronto Hydro Telecom Inc.
 

Free City Wi-Fi in Norwich (UK)

Norwich is almost 1-month into their 18month pilot of free city wi-fi.¬† They’re using a mesh, and have 256kbps speeds for “the public” and 1Mbps speeds for public sector workers.¬†¬† Like Toronto’s (Hydro), the mesh nodes are affixed to city lampposts to create seamless coverage.¬† Unlike Toronto, users do not need a cellphone to receive a text message that enables them to log into the network.¬† In Norwich, people access the wi-fi simply by agreeing to terms and conditions on a portal page that their web browser will point towards when a connection is made between a device and the network. This is exactly the approach taken by community wireless networking (CWN)¬†groups all over the world.¬† Like these CWNs, Norwich has had no problems so far with security or other “abuses”.

They’re also taking an experimental approach to it, opening it up for public use to see what economic and cultural applications and functionality emerge from its implementation.¬†

Designed not to compete with commercial hotspot provision, the network has two speeds – 256Kbps for the public and 1Mbps for public sector workers – which are slower than typical broadband speeds found in the home.

A full review of the service, and some insightful comments and recommendations are offered by Peter Cochrane, British Telecom’s former Chief Technologist.

Esme Vos over at Muniwireless has also posted about this, identifying Telabria and Synetrix as the main technological partners in the project.

(full article from BBC) 

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