'Europe's biggest'
free wi-fi zone set for London
The service will be rolled out across the
boroughs of Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea in 2012.
It will be powered by a system installed
on street furniture.
O2 said the deal, which will have no cost
to the taxpayer, will enable visitors to "make the most of what London has
to offer".
Councillor Philippa Roe, cabinet member
for strategic finance at Westminster City Council, said:
"Westminster welcomes over a million
tourists a day, is home to 250,000 residents, employs over half a million
people and sees 4,000 business starts-ups each year.
"Visitors to London will easily be
able to share their pictures and updates of the Olympic events across social
networking sites."
O2 will begin installing the Metro
wireless network across Westminster this month, initially being available in
limited areas before being rolled out across both boroughs.
'High quality connectivity'
London is catching up with other major
cities. In Paris, several hundred individual wi-fi zones offer free connections
in public parks and municipal spaces.
New York also offers free wi-fi in parks
and last year began to install wireless internet access at several of its
subway stations.
London's service will be powered by
equipment attached to lamp-posts and other existing structures on London's
streets, and should be completed by March.
"This ground-breaking deal... will
see us deliver high-quality connectivity across London in time for London
2012," said Derek McManus, chief operating officer for O2.
"Our longer-term aim is to expand our
footprint of O2 wi-fi, which is open to everyone, and also intelligently
enhance our services at street level, where people need the network the
most."
John Hunt, from independent broadband
review site thinkbroadband.com, said the service would be very popular,
particularly for overseas tourists worried about expensive mobile costs.
"Obviously, free wireless is a good
thing. It allows people to get online cheaper," he told the BBC.
"Whether it will be able to handle
the Olympics is going to be their main issue."
Underground trial
Mr Hunt added that London is becoming a
well-connected city for residents and tourists desperate to be online while on
the move.
"There are other networks as well,
such as The Cloud and BT Openzone, and a lot more places like coffee shops are
getting people online," he said.
However, he said residents living in the
free wi-fi areas should not be considering ditching their home connection.
"The problem you will have is that
the wireless may not be fast enough to support everything you want to do.
"I don't think it will necessarily
replace home broadband - it's more a complementing service."
In November 2010, Charing Cross became the
first Underground station to offer wireless connectivity as
part of a six-month trial.
A spokeswoman for Transport for London
told the BBC that it hopes to install the service in up to 120 stations on the
network in time for the Olympics.
Another trial, sponsored by
Finnish firm Nokia, involved 26 free wi-fi hotspots in locations
across the city. The firm said it planned to make it a fully-fledged service in
2012.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16440911
They just keep on ignoring the research and people saying this is making them sick and upping the ante. Come to London and feel sick with nausea, fatigue, and headaches. You will probably misattribute it to the jet lag or some kind of viral infection.
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