Municipal Wi-Fi Networks in London, Alexandria

xfletch writes "An famous London Street is now coverered by a free municipal wireless hotspot. Upper street in Islington is now one long Hotspot. The local council has set up this municipal Wi-Fi which they call the Technology Mile using cool-looking lampost-mounted access points [picture] at 200 metre intervals along the street, and the whole area is covered by free wireless internet, allowing users to sit in any of the area's numerous cafes or parks and access the internet. The scheme seems to be an extension of the Streetnet project, and requires a free login, and gives an hour's access before requiring you to login again. It is internet only, so email needs to be via a web-based provider." (Read more below.)

xfletch continues: "British press are reporting some objections raised by comercial Wi-Fi vendors, but conclude that in contrast to the U.S., where bills have been proposed in a dozen states that would forbid cities to offer Wi-Fi services to citizens on the grounds that government should not compete with private enterprise, we are unlikely to see such fireworks in the UK. Apologies for the camera-phone quality photos -- I will take better ones next time I have my digital camera with me."

Not quite as large, but closer to home for many readers, brokencomputer writes "According to a Washington Post article, 'This week, Alexandria began providing free wireless Internet access in its historic center, the first local government to offer alfresco Web surfing at no charge. The system, which relies on broadcasting equipment atop City Hall, the Torpedo Factory and a couple of utility poles, is aimed at outdoor cafe patrons or people who prefer parks to workstations, city officials said.' Interestingly enough, the article states that Verizon, which is the dominant high speed internet provider in the area, is not objecting to the city's plan."

Comments

http != the internet

[Gyorg_Lavode]

I'm sure this will be redundant as soon as I post it, but the HTTP is what enables web page browsing. The Internet is the entire network, hardware, software, and protocals.

The need for editors is ever so clear.

[Caspian]

"An" famous London Street?

This is what editors are for.

Re:HTTP only != Internet only

[Alioth]

If they allow port 443 (even via a proxy) you can use ssh. Simply set a remote SSH server up that listens on port 443, and:

ssh user@host -p 443

If it goes via a proxy, you'll need to set up a small program that does the HTTP CONNECT to your ssh server, and then have your ssh client talk to the local program. If you're using an SSH client such as PuTTY, this provides SSH access via proxy, and can do so by many methods, not just HTTP CONNECT on port 443. PuTTY, incidentally, can also act as a local SOCKS proxy and tunnel the entire internet through its ssh connection to your remote server.

What "Internet Only" Means

[kmactane]

"It is internet only, so email needs to be via a web-based provider."

Well, if it's really "Internet only", then there's nothing to worry about. I can use POP on port 110, or IMAP on port 143, to check my email. Then I can send it using SMTP to port 25 on my mail server.

Or I could just SSH to port 22 of my server and read my mail on the command line, if I have a shell account. (Which I personally do, along with, I'm sure, many others here.) Ports 22, 25, 110, 143, and their related protocols are all well-established parts of the Internet; heck, at least two of them predate that newfangled port-80 contraption.

Or did you perhaps mean that it's Web only? Slashdot is the last place I thought I'd ever have to point out: the Web != the Internet.

Re:Free my big fat ass

[EnglishTim]

Oh...and it's a State run service. So it's not going to be particularly resistant to things like, say, intelligence service requests for private user information, because it's the State which provides most of the money which the council runs on. Such things aren't likely I'd say to be *overtly* used to influence behaviour in such cases, but you know as well as I do it has a significant influence and is most certainly a conflict of interest - where the people who might ask for information just happen to also be rather closely involved with the people who give you funding.

In the UK our personal data is 'protected' by the Data Protection Act, which puts stiff limits on what can be done with our personal data. However, recently diabolical measures were bought in in the name of 'anti-terrorism' which defanged the act somewhat and hugely increased the amount to which government departments can share our data.

So yes, they probably can now share information with the police and other agencies about users, but it won't be some back-handed thing. They've been given that power explicitly by the government.

"Private" Streetlamp Wi-Fi Networks

[lxt]

I live in the UK, in Bristol (a largish city south of London) - and we too have these street mounted wi-fi boxes. Judging from the picture, they look like they're the same model too.

However, there's one important difference - ours are for use solely by the council, primarily traffic wardens, and are completely closed. I have a sneaking feeling they're also something to do with the multitude of street CCTV cameras that went up at the same time, but maybe not. Don't know whether they'd ever consider opening them up, but it's by no means unique.

Re:A bit evil, really...

[greenaudrey]

The Streetnet gear is supplied by BelAir Networks http://www.belairnetworks.com/ Each unit has 1 to 4 radios, a 802.11b or b/g radio for access and up to 3 backhaul radios. The backhaul radios operate in the 802.11a 5 GHz band and so don't interfere with access. (FWIW, I am a ./ reading product manager at Belair.)