The WT Blog

St. Lawrence Market and Dufferin Grove Park are offline

gabe — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 22:19:40 +0000

Wifi at St. Lawrence Market has been offline for a while now: our wireless backhaul has become too unreliable, and we need to address the issue of interference on the main floor. (When the network was installed six years ago, ours was the only wifi signal in the space — now we’re competing with *dozens* of private networks.) The folks at the Market are working on a new backhaul solution, which we’re hoping will be in place in a few weeks.

The wifi at Dufferin Grove Park went offline at midnight last night, because Rogers has discontinued their Portable Internet service, which was the backhaul for the service at the park. It’s a disappointing move by Rogers — the Portable Internet service filled an important gap between wired/DSL and cellular-network-based service. It wasn’t cheap or fast, but it was unmetered, which perhaps contributed to Rogers’ decision to discontinue it. It’s particularly disappointing for users in many rural areas, where it was the only viable high-speed option. In Toronto we have more options: we’ll be switching to an cellular/AWS service, but it’ll be a few weeks ’til it’s back online.

New hotspot: St Louis Bar & Grill on Yonge Street

gabe — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 22:30:25 +0000

The St. Louis Bar & Grill chain has expanded a lot over the past few years, and Wireless Toronto has set up free wifi at the ones at Atrium on Bay and at Fairview Mall. This week they opened at 528 Yonge Street (at Breadalbane, one block south of Wellesley), and that location’s now also a Wireless Toronto hotspot. Link: http://www.stlouiswings.com/locations/toronto/central/yonge-street/

New hotspot: Wychwood Open Door

gabe — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 22:27:57 +0000

Wychwood Open Door is a day-time drop-in centre that has served homeless and socially isolated people in Toronto’s midtown St. Clair West community since 1986. We’re really happy to be working with them to make wifi available in their space, including to two donated desktop computers which are now available for use. More info: http://www.wychwoodopendoor.org/

EFF: Why We Need An Open Wireless Movement

gabe — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 18:00:41 +0000

I’m surprised that there isn’t already an easy-to-use set of technologies in place to address this everyday, obvious, frustrating problem. But it’s very encouraging to see it being taken on:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/04/open-wireless-movement

Jason and Wireless Toronto in the news in Buenos Aires

gabe — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 21:49:12 +0000

Wireless Toronto co-founder Jason Roks is working with Buenos Aires Libre to set up some open-mesh, and picked up some media coverage in Pagina/12.

Nice yoda, Jason.

Sommet de l’Alliance

gabe — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 21:21:43 +0000

Our well-organized sibling groups in Quebec are having their annual community wifi summit in Drummondville next weekend. At the same time will be AuthPuppyCamp — the first(?) open meetup to discuss AuthPuppy, the platform which replaces WifiDog. I can’t make it, but I’m sure they’d be happy if someone from Toronto was there. It’ll be in French, unsurprisingly. A little early press coverage:

http://www.journalexpress.ca/Société/Technologies/2011-02-07/article-2204633/Le-CentreduQuebec-accueillera-le-Sommet-de-lAlliance-des-communautes-sans-fil/1

http://tva.canoe.ca/emissions/salutbonjour/chroniques/sb/divertissementtechno/109131/le-centre-du-quebec-techno

http://alliancecsf.org/

WT at Social Tech un/conference

gabe — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 18:20:54 +0000

Gabe will be presenting Wireless Toronto in the pre-unconference part of the Social Tech Un/conference that Free Geek Toronto is organizing this Saturday at OISE: http://stcu.freegeektoronto.org/?page_id=26 There are some great speakers in the morning, and the afternoon unconference should be good too. Come say hi! It’s free to attend; register here: http://stcu.freegeektoronto.org/?page_id=5

The Carrot Common is back online

gabe — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 00:54:09 +0000

We first set up a wirelesstoronto node at The Carrot Common on the Danforth in June 2007, but it spent over a year offline since then. Michael and I got it back up a couple of weeks ago, and it’s been working great…

Starbucks Launches Free + Libre Wifi

gabe — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 13:31:16 +0000

I had seen the ecstatic proclamation of free wifi at Starbucks in the US a few weeks ago, but missed the announcement that the deal was coming to Canada on July 1st too.

To be clear, “free wifi” of a sort had been available at Starbucks previously: you had to have a Starbucks.com account, and by logging in you could get 2 free hours/day. The new free wifi service is two-click: agree to the terms and click connect. (“Free wifi” versus “free free wifi”? “Free+libre wifi”?)

When you do so, it takes you to what is currently an almost blank version of the Sympatico portal: http://starbucks.sympatico.ca/home

I don’t know what the equivalent page looks like in the US, but I’m guessing that it’s more elaborate:

Building on the Wi-Fi update, Schultz also revealed plans for a new online customer experience called the Starbucks Digital Network, in partnership with Yahoo!, which will debut later this fall. This online experience – available only in U.S. company operated Starbucks stores – will be unique in its content offerings, allowing customers free unrestricted access to various paid sites and services such as wsj.com, exclusive content and previews, free downloads, local community news and activities, on their laptops, tablets or smart phones.

Driven by Digital Ventures, a new business unit within Starbucks led by CIO and General Manager, Digital Ventures, Stephen Gillett, the Starbucks Digital Network in partnership with Yahoo! opens up a uniquely valuable customer experience, while at the same time appeals to leading online content providers and provides a new channel for customer engagement. Launch content providers will include, among others, iTunes, The New York Times, Patch, USA TODAY, The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo! and ZAGAT.

http://news.starbucks.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=397

I like imagining how deals come together. I’m guessing this one went something like:

(Jun 14) Starbucks announces that the free wifi will be even more free at their US stores starting July 1st. Canadian Starbucks fanboys and fangirls are pissed.
(Jun 15) Starbucks Corporate hates calling Bell as much as anyone else, but they do it anyway, to see if they can work something out.
(Jun 25) Bell says “yes, we can do that, but it’ll cost you”. Starbucks pays Bell.
(Jun 30) Starbucks announces that the free-free wifi will be in Canada too — the day before it launches. Bell sets up token Sympatico portal page.

Bell is surely making way more money now than they were under the terms of whatever revshare agreement they had with Starbucks previously.

Spring has sprung. Let’s meet!

gabe — Fri, 21 May 2010 15:00:28 +0000

Mo’s post to our mailing list:

After spending a lovely afternoon in Dufferin Grove the weekend before last, and seeing the enthusiasm so many people have about the wireless access there, I feel inspired to get together and make something new happen.

i think it might be a good time to get together and start hatching new plans.

Personally, I’d like to explore the idea that if we pick just one of all the great ideas that have been kicking around WT lately, and all get behind making it happen in the next two months, the combined energy and teamwork might help generate enough momentum to roll us into other projects.

So we’re on for Wednesday the 26th.

Let’s meet at the 3 Brewers on Yonge Street, south of Dundas, at 7pm.

Bring ideas!!