The Hiccups of Free Wi-fi for Cities

Several cities around the country are considering implementing free wi-fi for its residents. Currenly, St. Cloud, Florida is the only one that can make that claim. However, the 28,000 residents are still experiencing hiccups in the system more than a month after implementation including being able to see receivers but not being able to connect or connecting at different times with weak signals or not being able to connect at all. As a result, many residents are still paying for monthly landline connections. HP, which has been contracted to build the project and provide customer support, says it is working to resolve the issues by adding more access points to improve signal strength in isolated parts of the city. Despite these issues, HP says that there were only 842 help-line calls out of more than 50,000 user sessions in the first 45 days of service.

That's really cool to see some people taking the initiative, although I'd hate to think of the interference issues that must create

I assume 'the country' refers to the US?

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Jeremy

Marlborough WiFi Project

Yes I think New Zealand is a bit behind in offering free Wifi as an incentive to shop or stay at certain locations. This has been happing for some time overseas as they can see the benefit of getting extra customers and being able to target advertising at them. Some hotspot providers may get into trouble when New Zealand cafe's and motels realise this. There is still a place for good quality, high bandwidth wireless providers but the high cost hotspots in the cafes etc, are numbered going by what is happing overseas.

Dale