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Toronto Hydro Launches Free Wi-Fi Network

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the everything's-bigger-in-canada dept.

k. writes to let us know about the launch Wednesday of Toronto Hydro's city-wide Wi-Fi network, at 6 square kilometers said to be the largest in North America by the time rollout is complete in December. The service will be free for 6 months and then will cost $29 (Canadian) per month, $10 for a day, or $5 for an hour. Toronto Hydro gets around fears of the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse by requiring use of one's cell-phone number as the user ID.

7 of 155 comments (clear)

  1. Whoo. by tygerstripes · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Hmm. Impressive? The City of Norfolk in Norwich, UK, would beg to differ. To whit:
    a 4km radius from County Hall, as well as key sites to the east and west of the city: Broadland Business Park , University of East Anglia , Norwich Science Park and Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital. In addition 28 hotspots in South Norfolk will be enabled shortly.
    That's pretty decent coverage for a back-water city in UK farmer country, and it's free. Kind of throws some context into this article, I reckon.
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  2. Disposable cell phones... by denis-The-menace · · Score: 4, Informative

    If I wanted to use this network for bad things I would just have to get a Disposable cell phone and go from there.

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  3. Re:Oh to hack.. by geoffspear · · Score: 4, Funny

    Oddly enough, many Toronto residents for some reason don't qualify for a SSN.

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  4. Quick note about cell number ussage by Thansal · · Score: 4, Informative

    from TFA # Enter your mobile phone number in the space provided. # You will instantly receive a text message containing your username and password. # Enter your username and password. # Start surfing. # Your username and password will remain valid for free service until March 2007 Your cell number is not your ID, they are just ussing a cell number much like you would use an E-Mail for registering for a forum or some such, Kinda like how GMail is giving out accounts (or was, I don't remember if it is still up). This is not designed as a counter to the 4 horsemen scare, infact it would be horribly easy for any one to obtain as many anon logins as they wanted via use of prepaid phones and changing the hpone numbers (something even prepaid accounts let you do).

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  5. Free? by Otter · · Score: 4, Funny
    Toronto Hydro Launches Free Wi-Fi Network

    As if things weren't complicated enough, now we have free-as-in-speech, free-as-in-beer, and free-as-in-$5/hour..

    Incidentally, if a digitalnetizengeezerologism like "The Four Horsemen" has caught on so poorly that you need to link to some netidinoWiredsaur's email from 1995, it's probably not worth hanging on to.

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  6. Re:I have a land line, you insensitive clod! by Jonny_eh · · Score: 3, Funny

    Don't forget the $500-$2000 setup fee for people who don't have a computer.

  7. Re:Just to clarify... by kripkenstein · · Score: 3, Funny

    Toronto Hydro is the power company, not the water company. Just in case you were wondering.

    Electricity, water, whatever. Just as long as we are clear that the internet is, in fact, a series of pipes.

    Sure, here we have wi-fi for part of the way, but after that it's pipes galore.