Toronto to Become Wi-Fi Hotspot

6 Mar ’06

I’ll confess I had to read this several times, and check my calendar to make sure it’s not April 1, before realizing that it was true – Tyler Hamilton is reporting in the Star today that Toronto Hydro is launching a city-wide wi-fi hotspot, as early as the fall in the downtown core:

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.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if you see it in September or October of this year,” said a source close to the project.

An extraordinary, breathtaking development, and something that many of us have been hoping for and blogging about for ages. With the accelerating adoption of mobile VoIP, this development promises to rattle cages of not only the broadband business, but the celphone business as well. And of course the practical impact of ubiquitous wi-fi on the way we work, play and communicate just can’t be underestimated.

Extraordinary.

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