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Is City-Wide Wi-Fi a Dead Idea?

Posted by timothy on from the sledgehammer-ready dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Remember all those projects to cover cities with Wi-Fi? The BBC wants to know what happened to them. When it comes to underground wireless data access, there are obvious issues regarding implementing a wireless infrastructure in underground stations and tunnels, but above ground the BBC suggests that it may be other advancements, such as Wimax, that have made Wi-Fi a less attractive solution. PCMag, on the other hand, suggests that public Wi-Fi isn't dead at all and will make a comeback due to the increasing popularity of Wi-Fi-enabled smartphones. So, will city-wide Wi-Fi make a real comeback, or have other technologies, such as Wimax or 4G, killed the concept for good?"

4 of 259 comments (clear)

  1. I hope it is dead. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I am allergic to Wi-Fi.
    And it causes cancer.
    It probably contributes to global warming too.

  2. Dying, dying, dead. by sakdoctor · · Score: 5, Funny

    On a parallel topic, practically every home router now comes with WPA2 on by default.
    I'm surrounded by a sea of BT home hubs which are probably idle, and can't even connect.
    Outrageous.

  3. Re:59 square miles by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 2, Funny

    Goddamn. I kept waiting for that to happen when I was living there, right smack in the middle of the coverage area ... and it looks like they got it up and running just after I left.

    --
    The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
  4. How about a little reporting by jamesl · · Score: 2, Funny

    The BBC wants to know what happened to [city wide Wi-Fi].
    Shouldn't a news organization like the BBC do some reporting and find out? Certainly more than simply phoning up someone at BT.