20060307

t-dot to the hotspot


thanks to jenny mc for the know - toronto is going to be come a nice hopspot and give those telecoms (down w/ rogers) a run for their monopoly. as early as this fall downtown. sweet ass



TheStar.com - T.O. to become wireless hotspot: "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."

This will help boost toronto to becoming an even cooler city. I don't think this will be a complete replacement to traditional cable broadband. Their will still be room for people who want to drop a bit more coin for more bandwidth, think rich-content (think gamers, streaming video, etc). This would actually free up roger's and bell's networks and we could see this increased bandwidth option sooner. WiFi is great for the average user who just does email, people traveling on business and those who want to surf in Queen's Park. I love having wireless internet at university. It will help narrow the digital divide and bring broadband access to more people (especially lower-income earners). this is great news - i love toronto and can't wait to go back. david miller seems to be an alright mayor - compared to some politicians downsouth it is great to see him on board such a project and see sparkle it brings to the city. the neat thing is that with VoIP we may potentially see competition in the cell phone market in the city core (remember skpe is free - you just need a handset).

It is funny to see how the big 3 (Telus, Rogers and Bell) crying about this and claiming that Hydro is a utility company and that they should stick to what they know best. They argue that dealing with "customer service" and "billing" will be too hard for Hydro - oh yeah and that is something that Rogers is GREAT with right? The last time I tried to correct a mistake they made I had to sit on the phone for 30 minutes (of cell phone airtime that I pay them for) just to speak to a human and only to get re-routed a million times. Maybe they should focus on creating a quality product and let a competitive market (finally in this area) help out the consumer for a change. Moreover, they provide crap service and always throttle torrents - just because they can and there is no competition to call them on it.

update: for those who like to listen more then read there is a great little 7 minute segment from CBC "As it Happens" yesterday, where Michael Geist explains the WiFi project in a bit more detail.