As of this Tuesday (April 24th), Toronto Hydro Telecom’s OneZone network started charging for access. Over the course of their 7.5-month free trial, they made some improvements to the network, hardware and software. An independent company rated theirs the fastest “municipal” wifi network around. Still, I often had trouble obtaining an IP address, getting to the login screen, and using any AJAX-based sites. Which is too bad, ’cause the two sites I normally want access to while I’m downtown are GMail and Google Maps — both of which were normally very sluggish on OneZone.
I wish them luck with their monetization. I’m unlikely to use the network again — I don’t live in the “zone”, and though my office is within it, there’s no signal in sight. (I guess the poles on Spadina weren’t part of the package they bought from the city, under questionable circumstances.)
If they’re short on cash, here’s a suggestion: pre-paid service with per-minute billing. I’ll happily today pay you $20 on my credit card, if I know that I’ll be able to (reliably) use the service anytime I’m downtown, at 5 (or maybe even 10) cents per minute.
Not many papers or blogs seem to have covered this yet; here are the ones I could find: