Free Wi-Fi in the Lower Mainland?

[](http://kdmurray.net/wp- content/uploads/2008/05/wifi11.jpg)The city of Boston along with a couple of partners offers free open Wi-Fi in a public area near the harbour.  While the news itself is more than 18 months old, I felt the need to post about it since I only discovered it today.

This is a move by the city of Boston which will help to improve the level of technological livability and help the local residents to take advantage of high-speed Internet access where they wouldn’t have necessarily had the opportunity in the past.  This got me to thinking about the situation with Wi- Fi access in the Lower Mainland.

Vancouver has no such municipally supported Wi-Fi efforts, despite some rumblings from the Mayor’s office a couple of years ago.  With the large influx of international visitors that will be descending on the city in the run up to the Olympic games in less than 21 months (642 days as of this writing) the city is in danger of becoming a technological relic.  Wi-Fi coverage in the city is rapidly improving, but it’s all being done by local businesses.  Private companies who are offering free access to the Internet to to their customers.  The problem is that these Wi-Fi networks are not standardized or linked in any way.  Though there are many places in the city that you can pick up a signal, you need to constantly re-connect as you move throughout the city.  This makes technologies like voice-over-IP inconvenient at best, and unmanageable at worst.

The City of New Westminster is once again evaluating the merits of city-wide Wi-Fi.  The issue was raised several years ago but never made it to council.  That delay has provided time for the city to learn from the successes and challenges experienced by other cities across North America and around the world.  Michael McQuillan [recently published a piece](http://www.bclocalnews. com/greater_vancouver/newwestminsternewsleader/news/17832304.html) on this discussion and notes that New Westminster’s small physical size make it an ideal candidate for a “mesh”-style Wi-Fi network.

Tomorrow I’m going to head down and try out Boston’s free Wi-Fi.  I’ll use it to send an email to Mayor Sullivan, and Mayor Corrigan of Burnaby to see if I can get their thoughts on municipally-supported Wi-Fi initiatives.