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UK to get Public Wireless LAN

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the start-running-ethereal dept.

shanksd1 writes "The IEE Review for May reports that BT is announcing the UK's first public access wireless LAN, with a little help from Motorola and Cisco. 400 wireless hotspots of range 100m should be implemented by June 2003, and 4000 by June 2005. These 500 kb/s access points will be located in hotels, railway stations, airports, bars and coffee shops."

4 of 140 comments (clear)

  1. Here's a better link... by RatOmeter · · Score: 5, Informative

    I couldn't find anything on the links provided above. Google found me this:

    BBC

  2. Did anyone mention legal? by fireshipjohn · · Score: 3, Informative

    The RA (equiv to FCC over here) has not actually licensed any commercial use of the 802.11 band here yet and it may be BT trying to force a decision from them.
    As yet what they propose is illegal in the UK.

    Consume the net anyone?

  3. News? by barnaclebarnes · · Score: 5, Informative

    BT announced their intentions a while ago about getting into this space...The fact still remains that it is illegal in the UK sell 802.11b bandwidth at the moment (AFAIK). They are banking on the fact that the government will change the laws regarding this (It does seem fairly likely).

    Once the laws have changed expect a lot more public for-profit WLAN's to emerge.

    I can't wait until someone actually puts them in though. Broadband in public spaces is sorely missing. If BT were smart they would build a 802.11b/Bluetooth AP into every phone box in the country. You can already SMS/Phone/Internet access at all the new ones anyway, adding wireless would be a small cost increment.

    /b

    PS: It is legal to use WLAN in business in the UK but not to provide a commercial service from it. So having a WLAN connection in your cafe and chargin for it is not OK, having a WLAN in the office for staff to use is OK.

    --
    [Please type your sig here.]
  4. Re:spaces? aagh!!! by T-Punkt · · Score: 3, Informative

    Actually it's not just bad style, it's a violation of the URI syntax (RFC2396).

    Even further: RFC2616 (HTTP/1.1) recommends that spaces should be stripped out of the URI (at least the default squid.conf says so and I'm to lazy to verify that) - but I bet the result would be a 404 in this case.