Ten cities for Wi-Fi MANs

The UK chancellor announced in his budget today a commitment to funding wifi in the ten largest cities in the UK.  Of course, at this point there's no details on when and how users will get access to these MANs (Metropolitan Area Networks) - note he didn't say "free wi-fi" - however I think this should be applauded as a powerful investment in the IT infrastructure of the UK and is another boost for WiFi itself as the future of wireless networking, especially as discussions over 4G carry on their slow path (see previous blog entry "WiFi Nearly Everywhere" http://wheresnigel.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/wi-fi-nearly-everywhere.html ).

Of course, I could moan that they are ignoring the rural areas (and, no doubt I will), but honestly where did we expect them to start? It has to be the largest cities.  Though he offers £50million for smaller areas too, so no doubt rural areas can bid for a part of that.

So, good work Mr. Chancellor.  Vendors - let's get this stuff installed.

Other cities/towns and yes even villages take note and its time to consider investing in Wi-Fi like you do in street lights and pavements, what about a solar-panel and wind-powered unit to sit on the top of all of our churches "surf and pray"?  The rest of us should keep buying Wi-Fi enabled devices, use our devices wherever we can, applaud those organisations that offer Wi-Fi services and march together to the always-on community we know is the future.

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See below for the chancellor's statement:

To be Europe’s technology centre we also need the best technology infrastructure. 

Two years ago Britain had some of the slowest broadband speeds in Europe; today our plans will deliver some of the fastest – with 90 per cent of the population having access to superfast broadband, and improved mobile phone coverage for rural areas and along key roads across the UK.

But we should not be complacent by saying it is enough to be the best in Europe when countries like Korea and Singapore do even better.

So today we’re funding ultra fast broadband and wifi in ten of the UK’s largest cities.

Belfast, Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle and London.
My HF for Brighton Kempton asked me to help small cities too – no doubt with his own city in mind.

I agree. £50m will be available for smaller cities too.

http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/budget2012_statement.htm 

Wi-Fi Nearly Everywhere

The incumbent national operator always comes in for stick, it doesn't matter which country you go to, the poor old national carrier is usually seen as more expensive, slower to roll out new features and therefore less innovative....

Here in the UK, it is no different and poor old BT have been criticised for decades, despite having to provide a universal service across the country, run uneconomic pay-phones, keep different businesses of their network separate and provide the backbone for their competitors while constantly negotiating with the regulator.  (Ignoring that they have been kept out of the mobile market altogether to ensure that they didn't squash the nascent mobile market all those years ago).

They will be happy, I hope, that this blog isn't to knock BT, as I want to praise one thing that they have been rolling out for a few years that may have passed you by, at least until it grew to its current size and they started promoting it on their latest TV adverts ... Their huge installation of Wi-Fi networks that other BT customers can share.

This advert says that that they have 3million Wi-Fi hotspots and these are each delivered by their own customers - though I notice the note below the advert now claims 3.5million.  Whoever thought of this was a genius, at the time they started, Wi-Fi wasn't as ubiquitous as now, but as each of us gather more Wi-Fi enabled devices we all want Wi-Fi access wherever we are and as more location-specific applications are launched, we get more addicted to being always on.  So, congratulations Mr or Ms BT.

http://www.youtube.com/user/BTCampaigns?feature=pvchclk#p/u/0/2sWsKpcUKE0

So, I thought I'd do a bit of maths...

A typical Wi-Fi radius coverage is claimed to be between 46M (indoors) and 92M (outdoors), so if we assume a radius of 75M, then each area of coverage could be around 1,7671squareM.  that is around one fiftieth of a square km

The UK's area is 243,610 square km - so 12 million hotspots all placed equidience apart would cover the whole country (countries), so if only the 3.5 million spots they have now were spread around, BT customers would have free Wi-Fi access in a quarter of the country.

Of course, its not like this - if you look around in built-up areas you'll often find multiple hotspots, but still its pretty impressive and with the local areas putting up free services (Westminster for example) and free services in restaurants and hotels - the coverage model is constantly growing.

Now, if only the devices would connect without any user intervention, default to Wi-Fi before 3G and 2G and the confusion in my head about the different between BTFON, BT-Openzone and BT-Openzone-H was cleared up, we'd all be able to have Wi-Fi "nearly-always-on".

I have an iPad that is Wi-Fi only and it has been a very rare occurrence that I've wanted access outside a hotspot and thought I wish I'd bought the 3G version - and each day as another bunch of hotspots gets installed, that will get less and less frequent.

Will there come a day when many of us use mobile phones that are Wi-Fi only? Just designed for data services, the user then uses Skype or equivalent for phone/video calls and the need for 2G, 3G and even 4G services goes away altogether? I think so, and I think it is closer than some people may think.

Here's one from Samsung, I wonder how many they sell and the growth that they are seeing -

Galaxy S

Hotel Wi-Fi - Great Differentiated Service

Having just come back from a week's holiday, I'd like to praise the Wi-Fi service offered by the hotel and wish and hope that others would do the same.

Firstly, the hotel is situated in around 12 hectares (20 acres, I think) of land with buildings scattered around, so I can imagine that coverage is tricky, but though they didn't guarantee coverage in every room, it worked everywhere I needed it.  I could see a range of external access points and they had the standard Wi-Fi logo on them, so anyone without coverage would know where to walk to get closer to an AP.  Not sure which vendor provided the APs, though I see that Ruckus Wireless seems to have a huge amount of the hospitality market with their Smart Wi-Fi providing greater distance and steering around obstacles, so perhaps it is them.  www.ruckuswireless.com

Then, each AP was advertising two different networks - a free one and a paid-for option.

The free network had limited access; no VPNs allowed and content filtering with various forms of adult content blocked, no streaming content from YouTube or even streaming content on other web sites, no downloading of applications from various app stores, shareware sites blocked etc. and a statement that it was a best efforts service, so presumably some QoS service that gave the paid-for service higher priority.

The paid-for service had a flat-fee of around $50USD a week, then you get open access, can use VPNs, watch streams and QoS priority.

I think this is great mix, it allows the customer to choose the service that they want and whether to pay for it.  Even the free service allowed me to catch up on news, Twitter, pick up my email and I thought to myself that I can wait for the new version of an app. and download it back at home.

All in all, I wish every hotel/airport/station would follow the same path.

And as I was praising their service, I'll give them a little plug - food and service was great too so if you are ever in Mauritius....
http://sugarbeachresort.com/