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London Is Still World's Wi-Fi Access Point Capital
ISP Review UK writes "The latest annual Wireless Security Survey from RSA has revealed that London is still the world's wireless network (Wi-Fi) capital, with a total of 12,276 access points detected, exceeding the number found in New York City by more than 3,000. However, the French capital of Paris broke all the records with a 543% year-over-year increase in the number of wireless access points, which compares with London's 72% (down from 160% last year) and New York City's 45% (down from 49%). The survey also examined how many of the wireless access points detected were secured with some form of encryption (hotspots excluded). In New York City, 97% of corporate access points had encryption in place (76% last year). In Paris, 94% of corporate access points were encrypted — although in London, 20% of all business access points continue to be completely unprotected."
that will just make this a whole lot easier if i ever have to move to london
in London, 20% of all business access points continue to be completely unprotected.
So the title should read "London is still world's Wi-Fi Wardriving Capital", yesno?
I found it difficult to find free wifi in London. I always ended up having to pay for it. Boo.
Orwell would be proud
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
".. in London, 20% of all business access points continue to be completely unprotected."
Plausible deniability, baby!
There is a war going on for your mind.
This press release is really misleading. In the last two years, RSA only surveyed these three cities, no others. So London is the world's wireless capital when they only surveyed NYC, Paris, and London? Not really.
Besides, the gross number of wireless network doesn't tell us much. A per capita figure would have been a more useful comparison. NYC metro has 17 million people, London 8 million and Paris is at 9.6 million. It also looks like they only focused on the city's "financial hubs."
If you read further into the press release, you see this other interesting note, most networks are closed:
Press Release: http://www.rsa.com/press_release.aspx?id=9725
Survey Results: http://www.rsa.com/node.aspx?id=3268
I went to NYC in summer and took an iPod Touch. Everywhere I went, there were 2 or 3 networks, often some open, often over 8 networks.
I went to London and Paris last month and took an iPod Touch. I'd open it and usually get no networks at all. It was odd going to a coffee shop and seeing no networks. Sometimes, if you went into them, there'd be a T-Mobile network, but it required you pay.
I ended up getting no real use at all out of the iPod Touch other than the London Underground map I preloaded into it.
London and Paris need to learn of this idea of free WiFi.
London also needs to understand the idea of running their subway all night. It was insane that I had to take a taxi to St. Pancras because the train to Paris was boarding before the tube started running for the day.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
You've got Nichtlachen-Keinwortz Syndrome, right?
This is interesting to hear because I was in Paris 3 months ago and had a very hard time finding WiFi. Or at least open WiFi. They were ALL locked down, which led me to wonder if there were some type of French law banning open WiFi points.
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
Besides, the gross number of wireless network doesn't tell us much. A per capita figure would have been a more useful comparison. NYC metro has 17 million people, London 8 million and Paris is at 9.6 million. It also looks like they only focused on the city's "financial hubs."
Well, the result would be the same then. More people per access point = bad.
My UID is prime. Hah!
Where did you get the 9.6 million populaton for Paris? Last I heard, the official population for Paris was just over 2 million. Moscow and London have a largest population in Europe (even Istanbul if you want to count that in)
As other posters have noted, the survey was only of three cities.
Even aside from that, for most people it's something of an academic point because unless you have infinite funds and patience you will be constrained to a few networks. Free ones are relatively uncommon.
It can still be useful though - just today I was able to work around a broadband outage in my office in Knightsbridge by buying a day's connection to the local BTOpenZone access point. Mind you, it was irritating that to circumvent a problem with BT's flakey internet I had to buy a service from BT themselves at an extortionate £10 for 24 hours, but still better than no connectivity for a day.
--- These are not words: wierd, genious, rediculous
I found more than a thousand wifi networks walking down Oxford street with a PDA this spring, and London only has ~12k wifi networks?
In New York City 97% of corporate access points had encryption in place, at first glance this is impressive, though I wonder how many of these are still using WEP... I would expect a large percentage, so even though companies are starting to smarten up by actually using *some means* of encryption, are they using a reliable method? Doubtful.
so let me get this straight: there's 3,000 less than 12,276 which is only 72% down from 160% net over gain loss from 49-45% with 97% up from 76% not publicly available.
In oulu (Finland, were polar bears and penguins roar) has free wifi with this http://www.panoulu.net. Thou it 'only' has about 1000 hotspots.
I got it from here: http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/largest-cities-population-125.html Maybe not the best source. It was the first thing I found that was from the last two years.
It would be more interesting and productive to know which cities have the most (intentionally) open, publicly usable, free-to-use access points, in useful places.
In London, I can generally only find a few I can use - and mainly only because I have access to the BT ones, in places like Waterloo station
However, Paris is the bee's knees. Every public park has free to use WiFi, and it's simply wonderful. In the summer I lay on the grass working with my laptop, and noticed many local business people doing the same.
I know London has a lot of FON hotspots, but I've never bothered subscribing to it, as they generally pop up in residential areas - and when I want WiFi, it's in a busy commercial area or a train station, not in the middle of the suburbs.
Where did you get the 9.6 million populaton for Paris?
Last I heard, the official population for Paris was just over 2 million.
Moscow and London have a largest population in Europe (even Istanbul if you want to count that in)
The official city of Paris has 2 million, but the metropolitain area more like 11 million.
London has 7.5 million, and the metropolitain area 13 million.
But going by the 'urban area' Paris has more -- 10.6M rather than 8.3M. The urban area is the population of the region where houses are within 200m of each other. The metropolitain area includes satellite towns (places where most residents work in the main city etc).
America's #1 Free Wireless ISP. Nationwide, and now #1 in London too!
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From my NYC apartment my laptop picks up 39 wireless networks. If I take it down 40 floors to the street I detect 3.
I can guess where they measured from...
Never mind our standard of living will plummet as some of us face our deaths in foxholes
Bye. Been nice knowing you.
as others bust our asses building bombs and living at subsistence levels.
Actually, building bombs pays much more than subsistence. Fun, too.
...cancer.
So that raises Paris's number of wireless networks from what, 7, to 45?
London's Underground network can't run all night. It's closed during the night for essential works. It only has one set of tracks, unlike the NYC subway which has two (so when one closes, the other can be used).
If it were being built today, no doubt they'd dig two tunnels, but unfortunately the network is over 100 years old and they didn't think of that back then.
"We live in a global world" - Harvey Pitt, former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman
Was thinking something fishy was going on.
Was in Prague and London this summer and both cities where nicely covered with wifi, however, subjectively the service was much much better in Prague than London - you have to look hard in Prague for a cafe without free wifi. Now the amount of AP's might be higher in London, but travelers/citizens ability to get online seemed quite a bit better in Prague.
Probably not true. I'd wager that the lions share of those 'unprotected' APs would just funnel you straight to a VPN login page, with no other access of any kind.
Specialization is for insects. -Heinlein
Never mind Seoul ... 23.8 million people and one of the fastest internet infrastructure services in the world. I know that London and NY are big, but you'd be going gray before you were about to drive around all the streets in Seoul. Not to mention the tens of thousands of high rises where a wifi signal won't be detectable.
RSA is full of shit and pushing the usual corporate agenda. Now we know they fudge statistics.
.
I had a briefing from RSA about this survey (writing it up for Ars Technica), and the wardriving that was done was not for the purpose of counting. Rather, it was a subsample of the city: a route that went through business and residential neighborhoods, and that has been driven consistently in London for 4 years. The same route in Paris has been driven for 4 years, and in New York for 7 years.
Freelance tech journalist for the Economist, MIT Technology Review, Macworld, and others
I wholly agree. They really need to add tokyo, or seoul or hong kong to the list of cities surveyed.....
Here, intentional, free WiFi is generally a value added thing to get you use a business' services.
Starbucks is the only coffee chain that made you pay locally AFAIK. Caribou, Panera, DunkinDonuts and all the smaller/independents offer "free" WiFi. Hotels generally offer WiFi on the ground floor. Sometimes it'll reach out to the pool.
Bars almost always seem to have an open AP. Restaurants that cater to business lunchers are a pretty safe bet. If you get desperate there's always McDonald's.
Even my local mall's foodcourt has free WiFi and they advertise it on the LED sign out front.
However you will rarely find one in a place that specializes in sausage gravy as a preferred topping for a meal.
Never found one in a park though. I should get a hotdog cart or a Lunch Truck and set up an AP.
"The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like to update the Adobe Updater now?"
And to complicate things further, the City of London has a resident population of 7.8 THOUSAND.
is another man's "available".
I'd love to be able to go somewhere around here and find more open access points, instead of a dozen, all with passwords.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I'm pretty sure the title of "Wi-Fi Point Capital" would be given to some other city if the survey was extended to other cities.
I'm actually thinking of Seoul. South Korea's KT (formerly Korea Telecom) has a well-known Wi-Fi service that covers 'nationwide' called Nespot. According to this article, there were 27,000 Nespot APs back in early 2007. The figure was around 17,000 in 2006 according to this (in Korean), so the number's been growing pretty fast.
Now, while this number is 'nationwide', the coverage is concentrated on major metropolitan cities only. Considering that Seoul has 1/4 the population of the entire nation (1/2 if you cover its satellite cities), there should be around 10,000 APs solely run by KT. Then there's the VoIP phone service that's made popular by LG Powercomm. It already has more than a million subscribers nationwide, and most of the phones are 'wireless' via Wi-Fi AP to communicate between the phone and the network. I can detect one of these APs from my house. These two companies alone probably put out several tens of thousands of APs in Seoul already. If you consider all other private and corporate APs that normally lurks around in buildings and apartments, the numbers would be mind-boggling.
Serving time in Aristotelean prison for violating laws of physics
...in London, statistically it is world class, however, the reality is totally different. See also categories Food, Rent, Happiness, Transport, Social Cohesion, Cost of Living, WIFI ACCESS, Net Speeds. I could go on...