The WT Blog

The next Wireless Toronto volunteer meeting will be on Tuesday, April 21st, 6-8pm, at the Centre for Social Innovation, 4th floor.  (215 Spadina Ave., between Queen and Dundas)

We haven’t met in a while, so it’s a great time to come out if you’ve never been to one of our meetings.  We’ll catch everyone up on what we’ve been up to, and talk about some opportunities this spring and summer.  Lots of ways to get involved, for designers, techies, writers, community folks, etc.  Hope to see you there…!

Ivor Tossel wrote a great piece in today’s Globe, on some recent good initiatives in Toronto focusing on openness.  WT friends Mark &  Tonya Surman, Mark Kuznicki and Rob Hyndman are quoted, and WT is mentioned among other CSI tenants, Spacing Magazine and the David Suzuki Foundation.

As of this morning, free wifi is available at Alternative Grounds; one of my favourite coffee places in the city.  Drop in when you’re on Roncesvalles!

The January 2009 issue of Toronto Life has a piece on finding free wifi in Toronto, and lists ten great spots; eight of them are Wireless Toronto nodes: http://www.torontolife.com/features/access-granted/

The folks at Village Telco have an analysis of the research paper written by Wireless Toronto friends Catherine Middleton & Amelia Bryne Potter, Is it Good to Share? A Case Study of FON and Meraki Approaches to Broadband Provision.

The writer’s criticism of Middleton’s conclusion about the (perhaps inherent?) instability of ad-hoc wireless networks seems misplaced given how painfully flaky these networks appear to be.  Especially given the reference just one paragraph earlier to an incident of several Meraki networks experiencing significant outages over the holidays when many people unplugged the units in order to plug in Christmas lights.

Nevertheless, it’s great to see academic research being covered by and feeding back into the community of folks who are building the networks… thanks, Village Telco!

The City of Montreal will make an announcement in January about their investment in wifi.  Either they’ll come through on a proposal they’ve been working on for over a year with Ile Sans Fil (the very well-established local community wireless group), or they’ll try to go forward on their own, perhaps partnering with a commercial WISP.  The former option is more plausible one according to the writer of this piece (and we agree heartily):

Le réseau WiFi prendra e l’ampleur in 2009 – Canoe / Argent

Ile Sans Fil

Re: $75M from Wi-Fi sale to be used for public housing, Toronto Star, Jun 14, 2008 http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/443356

Andrew Clement

The Toronto Star’s story about the sale of Toronto Hydro Telecom (THT), by taking its cue from Mayor Miller’s spin about community housing, misses several key points. While remedying the deplorable state of Toronto’s public housing is worthy of support, the unseemly haste to divvy up the spoils obscures the missed golden opportunity that holding on to THT would represent. Part of the problem can rightly be laid at the feet of the former Tory government that both down-loaded housing to the City without adequate financing and hobbled it from properly taking advantage of its telecom asset — i.e. more on-going damage the Harris government is still wreaking on Ontario’s public institutions. Read the rest of this entry »

From The Toronto Star: Toronto’s wireless network has fallen behind other cities

From MuniWireless: What ails Toronto’s city wireless network?

For sale: Toronto Hydro Telecom, IT World Canada.

I doubt the carriers will be interested in buying OneZone — it’s a lot of expensive infrastructure that’s not actually worth much strategically.

I wonder if this’ll be the first “muni” network that gets sold off?  (It wasn’t a real muni network in the first place, and this ensures that no one will ever again make that mistake!)

The article below made me think it’s time to get a few new hotspots on the Wireless Toronto map.

Not only have a few WT spots have gone out of business/shutdown, but I’ve seen tons of new spaces that seem perfect for provisioning free wi-fi! With spring not so far away, it seems that a venue sprint or something of the like would be in order… any ideas or takers?

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Montrealers claim to lead Canada in free Wi-Fi
By: Greg Meckbach
ComputerWorld Canada (11 Jan 2008)
Montrealers could soon boast their city has the largest number of free Wi-Fi hot spots, says an administrator of Ile Sans Fils (ISF) , a group of volunteers that helps business owners install wireless Internet access for their customers in Montreal.

Richard Lussier, an administrator with ISF, said he group has installed about 155 free hot spots, serving about 60,000 users.

….

In Canada, Toronto has the Wireless Toronto Centre for Social Innovation, which includes 38 businesses operating hot spots. Users who want to pay for Wi-Fi connectivity can hook up to One Zone, operated by Toronto Hydro Telecom in the downtown area.