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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."
Given BT's appalling record on broadband so far, I find it hard to get excited about this.
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
Will the EMP from the coming nuclear war in central Asia adversly effect my reception on the public wireless LAN here in the UK?
Yes
No
Who cares? I don't live in the UK!
Cowboy Neal
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.
We already have this in sweden
Yeah, but I find it so inconvenient having to fly to Sweden to check my email.
Actually.. Cambridge coucil 'recycled' old and unclaimed stolen(recovered or lost) bikes. Painted them green and left them around to be free to use. They were less likely to be stolen due to being obvious (green) and were very popular. And guess what.. theft of other bikes was reduced because the green ones were easier to steal. That was part of the whole thing. There was no real monetary loss for the green ones stolen.. and a gain because property of individuals was safer. It was a _very_ good plan.
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.]
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?]