Toronto To Become Giant WiFi Hotspot?

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1141643034143&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154&t=TS_Home' target='_blank'>http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Co...72154&t=TS_Home</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Toronto Hydro Corp. will announce Tuesday that it plans to turn Canada's largest city into one giant wireless hotspot, directly challenging the country's major mobile phone carriers for a chunk of the $8 billion a year wireless market. With the deployment, which sources say could be available in the downtown core as early as this fall, Toronto joins a growing list of North American cities, including Philadelphia, New Orleans and San Francisco, that have announced plans to bring low-cost, broadband wireless access to their citizens and businesses."</i><br /><br />If you live in Toronto, your connectivity may take a radical turn for the better in the coming months. This sounds like a very ambitious project, and I can't imagine the logistics of something like this. It will certainly shake up the Internet service providers in Toronto, that's for sure! Does anyone live in a city where they've done this? What has it done for you in terms of change how you interact with the online world? Blessing, curse, other?

[Hooch Tan]

I do live in Toronto, and while I'm all for it, what most news outlets are posting is greatly misleading in my opinion. What appears is going to happen is that Toronto Hydro Corp will create a hotspot only 6km2 in size coverling a large portion of the downtown core. So far as I can tell on the Toronto Hydro website, this is all that they intend on covering, so I'd consider it more of a downtown hotspot, and not a citywide hotspot as some people thing.

I'm not dissing it. I'm glad that they're doing this. (Though I am outside the coverage area, being in North York.) I just wish they had a grander scale, with intentions of covering the entire Greater Toronto Area. Then they would stand to compete against the telecoms.

[Cybrid]

I'm not dissing it. I'm glad that they're doing this. (Though I am outside the coverage area, being in North York.) . As a former Don Mills resident I should sympathize but I'm more envious. I hope Vancouver does this soon too.

Somehow I don't see us the consumer getting too much of a deal. Capitalism does mean charging as much as the market can bear. Just another competitor at the trough.

[Jacob]

Chicago is thinking of doing this too, but I understand there's a possibility that it will be a subscription of one quoted possibility is $10/month.

If everyone uses this kind of public hotspot, won't it take little time before it's just overloaded and useless to most?

[beq]

If everyone uses this kind of public hotspot, won't it take little time before it's just overloaded and useless to most?

I've been wondering about this too...

I guess for Internet access they can get by with say a couple of hundred Kbps for each user? Then again the 11a 5GHz channels would've allowed a lot more people in the same spot to have usable bandwidth... How about the upcoming 11n? Then again 11n allows wide 40MHz frequency channels that might make sharing among multiple users even worse?

Will city-wide Wi-Fi become obsolete if WiMax does take off?

[Cybrid]

I've been wondering about this too...

I guess for Internet access they can get by with say a couple of hundred Kbps for each user? Then again the 11a 5GHz channels would've allowed a lot more people in the same spot to have usable bandwidth... How about the upcoming 11n? Then again 11n allows wide 40MHz frequency channels that might make sharing among multiple users even worse?

Will city-wide Wi-Fi become obsolete if WiMax does take off?
Naw, with Wifi...the limited range would limit the users per AP. The load would be spread out.