Jan 4th, 2007
Wireless Cities
As you’ve probably noticed, wireless cities are increasing rapidly. Each day, hot spots are installed in San Francisco, Paris, Montreal, Prague and so on.
Quebec city is actually going wireless as well since a bunch of volunteers started Zap Québec. Based on Montreal ÃŽle sans fil, the idea is simple. Companies (Restaurants, museums, bus stations and libraries) buy a router (100$), antennas (if necessary) and give a yearly contribution (50$). Then, a team of volunteers will secure their network and set up their router so users can use their broadband internet connection. It’s totally free for users and really simple to use, but they are asked to respect a couple of rules (for example : do not use the wifi connexion as their personnal Internet access).
Imagine how it can be nice for someone on a business trip to have access almost everywhere he goes (restaurants, hotels, meeting room, clients) to a wifi internet connexion easily accessible and free!
If you want to know more about how wireless cities could get the maximum out of this in terms of tourism and travel, contact me!
By the way, I’m one of these volunteers, not really surprising eh?
A similar concpet on a larger scale is http://www.fon.com , they give a away routers (or sell them at dumping prices) and all ‘foneros’ can share the access. Investors include Google and Skype!