A town is to become the first in the UK to provide free wireless internet access to all its residents, it has been revealed. Swindon, in Wiltshire, will be covered by a "WiFi mesh" offering blanket internet coverage for its 186,000 citizens, the council said.The £1 million project will be funded by a mixture of public and private money.But it hopes to break into profit with residents subscribing to faster, paid-for access, above the free service. Some 1,400 secure access points will be fitted around Swindon, similar to those used in homes "but with a much higher performance".The borough council worked with local businessman Rikki Hunt, who came up with the concept, and digital technology firm aQovia to create a new company - Digital City UK.Under the brand name Signal, it will roll out the technology throughout the town. Line rental is free and there is no connection charge. The public will be able to access the internet and download emails for without charge but usage will be limited. Anti-virus software, and popular services offered by Microsoft and Google will all be on the network. There are also plans to deliver information such as real-time information on home electricity usage and air quality monitoring. The technology also promises to 'revolutionise' home and business security with remote CCTV, which can work via laptops.
I think is a good idea, free internet for the more casual users, i think our tax money should be funding this kind of service in our cities, everyone getting a few gig per month would be more than enough and if your a dloader then the paid service would be a better option.
nah, it will have the bandwidth to be able to deal with it, if one of us did it with our 10Mb connection or w/e then it would be uber slow with the city sharing it.
yea the connection will prob be limited in speed for each person to like 2meg or something which is more than enough for normal usage and they will have a rele fast connection. kind of like universities rele. they will prob have several connections with each sharing for a certain area. also, usage is limited so i agree most people will still use their own connection, but it is useful for emergencies or for when people want to check e-mails using wifi in town.
the internet in the UK is alright not too bad. It could be cheaper but it's not too expensive i don't think. i think it is reasonable in price considering what it used to be just to use dial up connection and that was so much inferior to broadband. besides if u rele want speed u can always get virgin media's 50mb cable line. that i think is fast enough cos it's not just the speed on ur side but it depends on the server as well.
