Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Toronto to get city-wide Hot Spot

Charlatan · 03-07-2006, 11:49 AM

Toronto Hydro is about to offer a city-wide wi-fi service.

I, for one, think this is a great idea. I look forward to cancelling my land line service when I can get city-wide free cellphone coverage though IP.

I also look forward to surfing from the park.

Do any of you have this available in your cities? What do you think of something like this in general?

Quote:

T.O. to become a giant hotspot
Toronto Hydro plans city-wide WiFi Web access available almost anywhere
Mar. 7, 2006. 05:40 AM
PATRICK EVANS
BUSINESS REPORTER

When a city is one big wireless hot spot, what's life like?

Today Toronto Hydro Corp. is expected to announce plans to bring "municipal Wireless-Fidelity" (WiFi for short) to Toronto. It's a mesh of radio signals that can blanket an entire city, giving subscribers wireless Internet access virtually anywhere.

Toronto Hydro was keeping mum on the project details in advance of today's news conference. But the broader dream of a wireless city looks something like this:

WiFi receiving and transmitting units will be mounted on items of urban furniture, like street lamps or pay phones. They'll pick up radio waves carrying the Internet and pass them on from street lamp to street lamp. The waves will course up and down every street in the city, through parks, schoolyards, markets and pool halls. Subscribers will surf the Internet on a park bench or in a shopping mall.

But there's debate on how much of the the dream will actually be realized.

Professor Ben Liang, who researches wireless technologies as part of the University of Toronto's electrical and computer engineering department, said it's unlikely Toronto Hydro will manage to cover every last inch of the city.

"Most likely they are talking about public places. If it's the basement of a building and it's private property, I doubt they would cover that."

Liang said the project will dramatically increase the number of Internet signals flying through the air, but the signals themselves won't be any stronger than usual. "The signals travel through people. But they're harder to get through concrete and metal."

That means an apartment on the 20th floor of a building could be out of luck, Liang said. Even that idyllic vision of Internet surfing on a park bench could be a problem if it's a park full of trees. "A tree will block the signal somewhat."

Liang said the wireless industry won't use stronger signals because it's not yet known if they could cause health problems.

But what about an abundance of weaker signals? It remains to be seen if anyone in the city would be spooked by the increase in regular-strength signals the project would unleash.

They wouldn't be the first to question the safety of WiFi transmissions. Fred Gilbert, president of Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, recently banned WiFi networks from parts of the campus, saying it's still not known if regular exposure to wireless signals can have long-term health consequences.

Still, health concerns don't appear to be slowing down the rise of municipal WiFi in North America. More than 200 cities are gearing up for total WiFi coverage. These projects are in various stages of development, but Fredericton, N.B., appears to be in the lead.

It identified the need to develop community wireless connectivity in 1999, and that led to the Fred eZone, which today covers virtually the entire downtown core with free wireless service.

South of the border in Philadelphia, a program is almost ready to launch. By late 2006 or early 2007, the 350 square kilometres that encompass the city and its surroundings could be one giant wireless hot spot.

Wireless Philadelphia is a non-profit company working on the project to ensure that as Internet access expands across Philadelphia, low-income citizens will get expanding opportunities to use it. The City of Toronto and Toronto Hydro have indicated they will pursue similar initiatives here.

Derek Pew, acting CEO at Wireless Philadelphia, said the municipal WiFi will be offered to low-income users for about $10 (U.S.) a month (with market-value subscriptions costing about $20 monthly).

Along with offering the Internet everywhere and helping low-income people spend more time online, the project in Philadelphia is expected to pump up tourism and streamline government.

In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a science-fiction series written by Douglas Adams, characters travel the universe using a handheld device with a viewscreen that gives them information about the planets they visit.

As in space, so in Philadelphia. Pew said tourists arriving in the city might soon get handheld devices — viewscreens and all — that will help them see the sights. "As you wander around Philadelphia, you'll run into a portal or a website that gives you information on when things are open, tours.... The days of people with maps in their hands stopping somebody on the street for directions, those will be gone."

For government, the expanded Internet access could mean more people getting information in cyberspace, freeing up jammed phone lines, Pew said.

Government could also use the system to monitor parking meters and other automated systems, such as hydro meters in homes.

The technology is sure to heat up the competition among wireless carriers — some of which have locked subscribers into multi-year contracts. What happens, then, to someone with a contract who wants to try municipal WiFi?

"Unless the carrier decides they want to let a person move on to the Toronto network, then I guess he has his contract to honour," Pew said.

But contracts run out, he said, and the service won't launch in Toronto any time soon.

"By the time they get it built, that customer will be close to the end of his contract. It takes more than a year to construct one of these networks, and that's after you've already agreed to it. From start to finish, you're looking at an almost two- to three-year process."