Aehso’s Output

Municipal Wi-Fi for Dublin?

Dublin City Council have notions of building a municipal Wi-Fi network? From SiliconRepublic.com:

According to reports this morning, Dublin City Council has put out a tender for consultants to offer advice regarding technological, regulatory and financial issues if such a service was deployed.

I hope they are better at planning wireless networks than they are at planning everything else.

Another interesting snippet from that article:

A recent survey by UK telecoms regulator Ofcom revealed that Ireland has surprisingly the largest penetration of Wi-Fi hotspots per head of population in the world, with 18.3 hotspots per 1,000 people.

I for one am very surprised by that, even if there is no shortage of open Wi-Fi networks in the commercial districts of Dublin 2 & 4. This figure is probably driven by the broadband providers switching over to supplying cheap DSL/Wi-Fi routers. Maybe the Ofcom guys should broaden their survey a little, go war driving around California for a couple of days maybe…

4 Comments to Municipal Wi-Fi for Dublin?

1. 

   I found this info on the Ofcom survey
   http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2091-2484047,00.html

   “According to Bitbuzz, a WiFi operator, the average access point in Ireland generates about five log-ins a day, compared with just three across Europe.”

   It’s amazing what people will waste their money on.

   It sounds like the Dublin Wi-Fi will be pretty poor. They plan from the start to make sure it does not compete with comercial wifi so all people will be able to do is read email and surf the internet. No high bandwidth like voip. Basically it sounds like dial-up over wi-fi.
declan on January 30th, 2007
2. 

   hey John –

   I think most of the Eircom phone boxes nowadays include a wifi hotspot — in theory at least. (In reality, though, I don’t think I’ve heard of anyone successfully getting a connection via one in several years.)

   Anyway, that would certainly bulk up the numbers.
Justin Mason on January 30th, 2007
3. 

   There are still phone boxes out there? I must have stopped noticing them…
aehso on February 2nd, 2007

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