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UK to get Public Wireless LAN
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."
Will the EMP from the coming nuclear war in central Asia adversly effect my reception on the public wireless LAN here in the UK?
Hey India : "Turn on main screen!"
Given BT's appalling record on broadband so far, I find it hard to get excited about this.
Maybe its just a lack of caffeine, but I can't find anything regarding a wireless network on those two linked pages....
Does anyone trust a telecom company that puts spaces in their directory names, thus causing problems with some web browers? Not to mention, it's just bad style. Damn kids. Don't know how to do anything anym...grumble grumble..
http://www.btplc.com/innovation and technology/
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
I couldn't find anything on the links provided above. Google found me this:
BBC
Ah, when Stellarium gets the ability to track satellites, THEN i'll be more than happy to go wireless with my net connection.
Cheers
Bowie J. Poag
Hijacking someone's 802.11 connex and ordering some smack--maybe even charge it to their [insert charming British expression for "Credit Card" here].
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
Ah, okay, the BBC to the rescue once again.
I guess CmdrTaco was thinking wireless but flying brainless.
cambridge thought it would be a good idea to give people public bikes
....
;-)
they got stolen by a few people and then they didnt try it again
it'll be the same with the wireless points some people will abuse it and all the rest of us wont be able to use it
who cares really
I want my 384Kbs to my mobile phone NOW......
then I dont have to share my bandwidth if I dont want to
regards
john jones
p.s. it also means that I can stream my MP3's from home (as well as Mpeg
In Stockholm if you have a laptop with a wlan card you can sniff for open access points from wlans used by companys.
Quite a lot of them don't use encryption or locked down MAC addresses so you can leech bandwidth from about half a dussin open networks while sipping coffee at a nice cosy coffee shop.
I imagine this must be ten times worse in big cities like NY.
This isn't really feasable in the U.S. Our country has too small of a population density to make this really worthwhile on a federal government scale. The only way that I could see this happening in the U.S. is if each city paid for the wireless network then the Federal Government footed the bill for backbone access. Thus splitting the costs between local and national levels and making it affordable to each party involved.
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
Every time I hear about this type of thing, the exact same question springs into my mind. How is user accountability enforced in this type of "wide open" network enviroment. Normally, people can be back-tracked to their ISP, and a name can be connected to an IP for a given time frame. What's to stop someone from using these public networks as a means to perform malicious behaviour anonymously? In a setup like I'm picturing, there wouldn't even be a need to spoof your IP address.
A musician without the RIAA, is like a fish without a bicycle.
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?
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.]
sure, they are allowed to use WEP all they want. WEP is about as private as a glass house.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
when installing all those cameras to spy on their citizens.
This is not a new idea - it was suggested years ago in an article in Wired.
Actually nobody in the UK (apart from the criminals) does anything but enthusiastically support the CCTV systems, particularly when a child goes missing.
As a district councillor I have been invited several times to visit our council's control room, but haven't bothered to find time yet because, whilst it would be an interesting visit, it's not a bit deal as I have precisely 0 constituents worried about CCTV who need to be reassured. (I think that in fact anyone who asks to visit the control room will get a tour. So in fact I think we already have public access to the CCTV pictures.)
The only complaints we get are that CCTV sometimes fails to catch criminals; and that there aren't enough CCTV cameras, which is a complaint we get every time there is a crime not covered by the camera system.
[Of course, in a country where everyone is entitled to own guns and they have more shootings than we have burglaries they might simply be used to being victims of crime as a way of life, and "privacy" nutters might, with the backing of the NRA, make more noise than they do here?]
We already have public access wireless in the UK - look at this for instance.
And this is running at a faster rate!
Sure, just don't expect to keep as much of your paycheck. And don't forget the VAT. most geeks that read slashdot like myself love purchasing electronics. See how much you can purchase with a 17% overhead, not to mention other local taxes.
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
serious restrictions on where the police can put them
The police don't put them anywhere.
Not here, in Cambridge, anyway - it's run by the local council under democratic control, which means me and 41 other councillors. I can assure you that we get endless requests for extensions to the system and have not had a single complaint except where the system has failed to catch a criminal.
Sure, the council-employed operators cooperate with the police, but the police don't get to see anything that the council employees don't think they're entitled to according to the rules. For example, there needs to be a reasonable certainty that there is something serious in progress right now before the privacy screening can be turned off.
Actually, being a Brit who moved to the US, I pay about the same % overall here as I did in the UK if you include basic healthcare costs and the suchlike. YMMV of course.
What would Lemmy do?