TORONTO TO GET WI-FI Jack Kapica – Globe and Mail Toronto is set to join a small but growing club of North American cities that will offer municipal wireless Internet access.
In a press release issued Sunday, Toronto Hydro Telecom said it would make an announcement Tuesday morning, when Mayor David Miller, Toronto Hydro chairman Clare Copeland and Toronto Hydro Telecom president David Dobbin will say they want a piece of the growing Wi-Fi market.
The project will put Toronto in the company of other cities that have made similar announcements recently, including Philadelphia, San Francisco, New Orleans and Chicago. Via Rail recently announced it would offer Wi-Fi service on trains on the Quebec-Windsor corridor.
The wireless market in Canada — which serves both businesses and individual users — is estimated to be $8-billion, and growing.
The plan is the largest of its kind in Canada, and will pose a challenge to the major mobile phone carriers, including Bell Mobility, Telus Mobility and Rogers Wireless.
The idea of wireless broadband is to cover whole cities with the same kind of wireless technology found in many homes and small businesses. Toronto Hydro plans to link it to its "smart meter" plan, under which it could monitor electricity usage in homes and businesses over the Internet. Toronto Hydro could reach each smart meter with a laptop or any other computer.
Toronto Hydro, the nation's largest electrical utility, bought Toronto's street-light system for $60-million last year, and it is expected to place wireless transmitters and receivers on top every fourth or fifth lamppost, blanketing the city in one huge network.
Such a network would make broadband access ubiquitous. Among its benefits to the city will be generation of revenue while offering affordable high-speed Internet access to low-income families and neighbourhoods.
It will also attract tourists, businesses and conventions that ere increasingly reliant on wireless communications. Police could have easier access to their computer network and city officials automate such activities as monitoring parking meters.
Toronto Hydro could also sell a version of its system to other service providers.
The technology is not new. BelAir Networks of Kanata, Ont., and Nortel Networks of Brampton, Ont., are already offering similar systems. Hamilton and Sault Ste. Marie are also looking into the idea.
City-wide Wi-Fi services have run into serious resistance in the United States, where major wireless carriers are charging that by handing Internet connectivity to a municipal utility is basically giving that utility a monopoly. Moreover, the wireless carriers say, utilities have little or no experience selling Internet connectivity, and that there would be a rough period of transition.
The Toronto Star cited unnamed sources who say that the service could become available as soon as the fall of the year. |