Municipal WiFi is not dead in the UK. Swindon a town of 186,000 residents is getting free internet access available to all its citizens. The Swindon City council has partnered with aQovia to put up 1,400 access points in the city, and target the technology at other towns in the UK. The first phase of Swindon’s Wi-Fi network will be switched on in early December. Swindon Borough Council plans for all 186,000 citizens to have blanket “Wi-Fi mesh” coverage by April 2010.
The Wi-Fi project will be run by Digital City UK, of which Swindon Borough Council has a 35 per cent share, with the intention of working on similar rollouts of the technology in other towns and cities across the UK.
Everyone in the town will be able to get basic web access and email from next April, but will have to pay to take full advantage of the full speed.
The Digital City UK group expects the network to make a profit, noted Mustafa Arif, director of aQovia.
“Digital City’s business model is built around subsidising free access with revenues from business and community services that are delivered over our wireless network,” he said in a statement.
Good luck with that. Municipal WiFi has proven too expensive and unreliable for city-wide services elsewhere, although it targets dense population pockets pretty well.
It contrasts with the UK government’s Digital Britain plans, which looks to get 2MB out to everyone using DSL in the next two years.
