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Swindon scores WiFi mesh
Author: Gareth HalfacreePublished: 18th November 2009
The plan by Digital City UK is to offer all residents of Swindon a free 1Mb/s WiFi Internet connection - along with a paid-for upgrade option to 20Mb/s.
As reported over on TechRadar, the service is the brainchild of a collaboration between the city's council and two private companies - aQovia and Avidity - under the banner of Digital City UK.
The project - dubbed Signal - aims to cover the entire city with free 802.11g WiFi coverage, which will be available to all citizens free of charge - albeit at a restricted speed of 1Mb/s. For those who would prefer their band a little broader, the group has promised to make 20Mb/s connectivity available at a price which Digital City UK claims will undercut the competition significantly. If that wasn't enough, the company also promises to offer a three-month free trial of the higher speed to all residents in order to tempt them into upgrading.
As well as the speed upgrades, the project aims to make back its estimated £1 million implementation costs by offering pay-as-you go access to the city's visitors in much the same way as commercial hotspot services such as BT's OpenZone. However, the group has yet to offer any firm pricing - either on the resident's only 20Mb/s service or on the pay-as-you-go offering - or details about latency, contention, or any download caps or traffic shaping that might be in place.
Councilman Rod Bluh believes that the project will offer the ability for "residents in the borough [to] be able to access the Internet for free, [and also] the council and its partners will be able to use the technology to provide cutting edge services to the areas or individuals who need them."
The roll-out of the service is expected to go ahead starting in April of next year. Those in the area who would like to register their interest in the service can do so on the official site.
Do you salute Swindon's efforts to be at the forefront of Digital Britain, or could the £1 million be better spent than on offering 1Mb/s Internet connections to residents? Will enough users pay for the upgrade in order for the project to flourish? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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If they could roll out a worldwide system like this I certainly wouldn't mind a pay-as-you go type system, so long as the price isn't ridiculous.
The real issue in the UK, is who will pay to fibre the last mile, to provide the 100+ mb connections that we need to remain productive, and DL 1080p videos of ninja cats from Youtube!
Turbotab if the mesh works well then maybe a few booster masts between Swindon and far out villages would solve the fibre issue?
It sounds very good for browsing the net about town, but wouldn't appeal to me as my own home broadband.
how do they plan to block pirates on an open network?
SInce the government's been going mentalist and saying it's clamping down on piracy, how is this going to do anything other than make it worse?
Nice idea but it's yet another kick in the nuts for our massively over subscribed creakey old networks.
And the more hardcore user who can't take the speed but can fork up the bill can choose the 20MB/s package.
I just want 4G in the uk that looks like the dogs bollocks right there, and coverage shouldn't be a problem this islands tiny!
**begins downloading latest sources from trunk (nmap, wireshark, metasploit, etc.)**
me i would rather have everyone to pay for internet becasue if you can't afford the internet you certanly can't afford a computer
The 'commercial' guys accept the hardest task will be to persuade current users to change suppliers
The best bit is that the Council will not say how much of taxpayers pounds they have 'invested'
Given only 24 hrs earlier the council said they ahd a £3million shortfall to make up and this would require prioritising todays announcement is mind boggling.
Additionally, I am very very interested in the fine details of the agreements, the equipment, and any software they are using. This is just so interesting to see how they "hammer" things out.
The problem over here is that it's made into some political issue and sprouted from councils who don't have a clue about what they are doing. As Des@Swindon has quoted, they've done the press conference but missed out the point about the funding shortfall.
As to the fibre for the last mile. 3 years ago I moved house away from a fibre cable area and I cannot overstate how bad an idea that truly was. Having to deal with a BT line that has all the right cabling up and down the country to the exchanges but than have decades old copper wires from the exchange to the house can make you suicidal. No one is willing to go out on a limb and clearly state exactly what speed your line is actually going to get. I had 3 suppliers quoting 3.5mb but the line only generated 1.5mb at best. After many phone calls I eventually got an engineer to come out but found no fault.
Now I've moved back to a fibre area and am living in 50MB (soon to be 100MB) paradise!
I'm assuming you mean 50Mb (soon to be 100Mb), otherwise daaaayum. That is a very fast connection.
Before it's sprouted by some idiot, I don't work for VirginMedia. Customer sales/services sucks big time but once you are up and running it's fantastic.