London Could Soon Get Free Wi-Fi Everywhere

fangmcgee writes "London could soon be covered with a free public WiFi network as Virgin Media moves to challenge BT's Openzone network. Virgin Media's network would be freely available to anyone at 0.5Mbps, and to subscribers to its home broadband at speeds up to a blistering 10Mbps. The proposals would see WiFi routers installed in each of the company's street-side cabinets, which distribute its cable network to homes and businesses."

Comments

3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[Jane Q. Public]

Looks like Sir Richard Branson is kicking the establishment's ass... AGAIN.

What happened to the USA that WE don't seem to have many people like this anymore? Where are they? Why don't they step up?

Burt Rutan was one. He's retired now. A well-deserved retirement. And I don't think it's a coincidence that he and Branson found each other.

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[phantomfive]

Don't worry, we have Trump. He'll......oh crap.

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[Anonymous Coward]

Women may not have testicles, but that doesn't mean they can't have balls!

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[interkin3tic]

What happened to the USA that WE don't seem to have many people like this anymore?

We do.

True, it's not giving away wifi to a major metro area like New York, but the Google guys don't count as entrepreneurs that kick the establishment's ass and, er, have testicles? Because while Virgin is giving away free internet, and that's nice, Google is giving me free maps and free* e-mail that's much better than the e-mail service I had before.

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[MacTO]

Entrepreneurs usually want to make money, and don't want to lose it. So here's some basic questions that you should ask before praising Branson and bemoaning the lack of free WiFi in your home town:

1) Does the density justify it. Too few people per square mile means that you'll never recover the cost of infrastructure.

2) Are enough people willing to pay. Note the tiered system, that's because someone has to pay for it. Maybe Londoners are more willing to pay than Americans (or even people in other parts of the U.K.).

Branson does NOT want freeloaders, but he may be willing to put up with them to get through bureaucratic hurdles. The people who really matter to him though are the paying customers.

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[Dunbal]

His toupee will demand to see a certificate of Virginity?

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[Dunbal]

The best thing is that because it's "free", and because it's advertised to have a relatively low bandwidth, he can probably get away with much less than 0.5 Mbps while at the same time harvesting data for relatively little cost. I mean it's "free" but I expect you'll have to log in or give an email or something... oh and lo and behold, people love to use the same email and usernames for everything...

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[Jane Q. Public]

Don't be silly. It's just an expression. If it were worth getting offended over, who should be more offended than me?

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[Spad]

Virgin Media isn't actually part of the Virgin group, they just acquired the rights to the name after NTL and Telewest merged a few years ago.

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[JasterBobaMereel]

London is largest metropolitan area by population in the EU

And :
NYC 8,175,133
London 7,825,200

So yes it is worth it ...

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[Jane Q. Public]

By the way: if you think anything Google gives you is "free", then you don't know how it works.

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[Jane Q. Public]

Branson has a long history now of nailing it on the head. I would hardly think he hasn't done his research.

That's no guarantee, of course. But the man has some smarts.

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[MacTO]

I'm sure that Branson has done his research and there's a good chance that it would work in London or New York. But the original post just said USA.

American cities are notoriously low density. There are maybe three cities with over 500,000 people and a population density greater than London. Cities like New York and London are also relatively rich, so there's a good chance of recovering costs. Most parts of the USA aren't so rich (and I'm guessing the same goes for the UK).

So I'm not questioning what Branson is doing. I'm questioning the people who think that someone should provide free wireless to them without doing their own research to see if it would turn a profit in their area. (And if it wouldn't, are they really entitled to free wireless?)

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[sjames]

They're all tied up for the next 30 years in court fighting the zillions of meritless lawsuits from the incumbents whose only "innovators" are in the legal or lobbying departments.

The rest never made it that far and are either in the soup lines after trying or they're busy in their cubicles filling out expense reports and timesheets (in 5 minute intervals) hoping one day they can get the funds together to put their ideas in practice. The venture capitol they need is busy chasing people with empty heads, expensive suits and wallets big enough to buy a few rounds of 6 martini lunches.

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[Tim C]

This has nothing to do with Branson, Virgin Media just licence the name and aren't actually part of the group.

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[Rowenas Dad]

You mean you do not have people who funnel as much of their income as possible offshore to another, tax friendly country in order to pay as little as possible in tax to the exchequer of the country they operate in?

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[Tim C]

On 2), they are talking about 0.5Mbps free to anyone, and up to 10Mbps free to their home broadband subscribers. No one is directly paying for it, at least as current envisaged. I imagine one possibility is that they hope this will increase uptake of their broadband service; think of it as an advertising campaign that's actually useful. Also as others have mentioned Virgin Media is nothing to do with Branson, though that doesn't change your main point.

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[Ramble]

On the contrary Virgin Media is not run by Branson and their service is awful.

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[BasilBrush]

Appearances can be deceptive. Branson doesn't actually run a lot of the Virgin companies. The Virgin brand name is licensed out. In the case of Virgin Media, Branson owns 10% in return for the brand name. He's not the one calling the shots there. And if he was, it would be tarnishing his reputation, as Virgin Media has a pretty bad name in the UK.

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[dkf]

London is largest metropolitan area by population in the EU

And :
NYC 8,175,133
London 7,825,200

So yes it is worth it ...

Not just that, Eurostat reckons that London's over 11 million people in size (it's bigger than its official boundaries) and even that is probably an underestimation. (OTOH, NYC is probably bigger than the official 8-and-a-bit million above too.)

Measuring the size of cities is surprisingly difficult.

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[jkflying]

Ok. I keep hearing about them, but never see any examples. Could you please give a few examples of these actions they've taken that make their "Do No Evil" slogan invalid? Customizing ads based on email content? Facebook starts giving you ads for wedding rings if you've been in a relationship for over a year. Truth to tell, I'd rather have relevant ads, because then I might actually find them useful. The censorship in China? If I remember correctly, Google fought against it long and hard. Eventually they agreed, rather than being booted out of China, and it is the Chinese government that is doing the Great Firewall of China, not Google. Patents? Google doesn't go around threatening to sue little people.

So, what are all these bad things Google has done?

If anything, the real error Google has made is not having a team to cover up all the FUD that the internet tends to spawn...

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[jkflying]

You install AdBlock Plus in the web browser that Google designed, and those ads disappear. Unless you want to wear tinfoil hats...
Seriously.

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[TheRaven64]

You realise that Branson hasn't had anything to do with Virgin Media for quite a few years? He licenses them the trademark and has nothing more to do with the company (he even sold his shares a long time ago).

The logic behind this is that Virgin has a cable network that basically sits idle during the day. Providing free WiFi is cheap for them, and will provide a lot of advertising. It will cost them about £2m to deploy (their numbers), which is a lot less than a big advertising campaign. If they're providing a public service at a loss, then they can probably offset it against tax, so it becomes even cheaper.

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[AC-x]

They're all tied up for the next 30 years in court fighting the zillions of meritless lawsuits from the incumbents whose only "innovators" are in the legal or lobbying departments.

It's not quite that bad in the UK, yet...

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[Chrisq]

If it's anything like their ISP service in homes if you so much as dare to read an email during the day they will throttle you for a week.

I'm exaggerating of course but sadly not by much.

Thats not true, you can get an unlimited service (at extra cost) and the most basic package has a 200mb limit, after which you will be throttled for 12 hours.

If I were to complain about anything it would be the actual unthrottled speed, about 20% of the rated maximum seems typical except early in the morning.

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[sgbett]

Are you on ADSL?

The article suggests they will be piping through the cable network which tends to be far better at delivering closer to advertised speed. ymmv.

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[Chrisq]

Are you on ADSL?

The article suggests they will be piping through the cable network which tends to be far better at delivering closer to advertised speed. ymmv.

No I'm on cable. I think there must be too high Contention Ratio because I get bursts of full speed and a lot of time its below. Long downloads average out at about 50% of the speed, but often a short speed test only gets 20%.

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[geedubyoo]

Huh?! I've been with Virgin broadband for years, currently on the 20Mb service - I stream music and surf the web all day long, watch hours of BBC iPlayer in the evening, plus can download gigabytes of software. I have never been throttled. The last time I checked, I can download 10.5Gb per day (and it's completely unlimited at night). I suggest you have a word with whoever is sending you such big emails!

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[sgbett]

different experience for me. - 50 meg package (can't get 100 yet!) and I get mostly full speed (giganews, speedtest.net)

I found I would get slowdowns due to my local network at times (net gear + mac issue) but these always went away when testing straight from the pipe.

I assume you've ruled out any local issues? and that the speedtest site you use can handle your bandwidth (I know some aren't up to dealing with top end virgin cable packages!). sorry if these are obvious questions - no disrespect intended!

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[xaxa]

According to this article, O2 mobile broadband customers already get access to WiFi hotspots run by "The Cloud" (I see these quite often, usually in pubs), and T-Mobile customers to T-Mobile's hotspots. This helps them reduce demand for 3G spectrum in busy places (stations, airports etc).

It seems Virgin rolling out a similar service, and as a Virgin customer I may well find it useful. However, my 3G signal is usually excellent and unmetered.

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[Dunbal]

No, not hack. Associate. Correlate. Put into a database and sell to someone for marketing people. Of course there's a flaw built in to this idea because the demographic you will be collecting data on are people who are too poor/lazy to pay for a decent internet connection. I'm sure, however, that even for this group there are goods and services that companies are willing to sell to it. But after all whenever a company is going to give you something "free" they feel they can first rape you in the arse to do so. If you think this is different, well...

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[markxz]

I would assume that they will offer full speed access for a fee as there will be lots of people who want the higher speed access, but not have home broadband from them.

I considered getting cable (TV, phone and broadband) from them, but they seem to have forgotten that they cabled my part of the street.

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[UnresolvedExternal]

It took some Vagina to say that....

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[myth24601]

If a company in the USA put WiFi routers all over a US city in "street side cabinets", they would probably be sued by anyone who goes near the cabinets then later gets any type of cancer (or slight cough probably).

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[atrain728]

8,175,133 is not NYC's metropolitan population. That's the city limits population. Similarly for the given London number.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_areas_by_population
4 New York United States 19,750,000
18 London United Kingdom 12,875,000

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[cbope]

Please, not the same tired old population density excuse used in the mobile phone industry to defend why the US has such crappy service and coverage compared to, like, anywhere else.

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[asdf7890]

Eventually they agreed, rather than being booted out of China

That is enough for many people. They were eventually willing to compromise on what was seen as a moral stance, for commercial gain.

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[tehcyder]

But entrepreneurs are the essence of the establishment. Anyone who devotes their time and energy to making money is unlikely to be a political revolutionary.

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[Chrisq]

different experience for me. - 50 meg package (can't get 100 yet!) and I get mostly full speed (giganews, speedtest.net)

I found I would get slowdowns due to my local network at times (net gear + mac issue) but these always went away when testing straight from the pipe.

I assume you've ruled out any local issues? and that the speedtest site you use can handle your bandwidth (I know some aren't up to dealing with top end virgin cable packages!). sorry if these are obvious questions - no disrespect intended!

Ah, I'm on the basic 10 meg package. I expect they have better contention ratios for the top-end packages

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[tehcyder]

Branson has a long history now of nailing it on the head. I would hardly think he hasn't done his research. That's no guarantee, of course. But the man has some smarts.

*cough* Virgin trains *cough*

He often does things for no discernible economic advantage, I suppose it's all part of a general masterplan to control Britain.

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[Trubadidudei]

You don't need entrepeneurs to get this kind of thing to happen, here in Norway we've had that for around 3 years around the sentrum of the city, stretching out quite far from it at the most. It's actually the universities that made this happen, and thus by extension the state (students don't pay the university money to go there, pretty much everything comes from the state).
Also, in the hungarian town Pécs where I'm currently living, there's free wifi internet in the whole town, and according to speedtest.net it clocks in at 0.2mb/s. That probably the speed its going to end with in london as well.

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[sgbett]

You might be right. It's would be disappointing if that were the case though - I would (perhaps naively) hope that they try to maintain a consistent level of service whatever the package.

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[smithmc]

Not just that, Eurostat reckons that London's over 11 million people in size (it's bigger than its official boundaries) and even that is probably an underestimation. (OTOH, NYC is probably bigger than the official 8-and-a-bit million above too.)

Measuring the size of cities is surprisingly difficult.

Depending on who's counting, the NYC urban/metro area has between 11 and 22 million, with several measures roughly agreeing in the 17-19 million range.

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[AmberBlackCat]

This is what happens when somebody tries to do that in the United States.

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[hawkinspeter]

Compromising on a moral stance is a long way from evil.

Re:3 Cheers for Entrepreneurs with Testicles.

[interkin3tic]

We have different definitions of "free." I think of free as "I don't have to give them money, which I don't have much of, to use their service."

I'm well aware of their targeted advertising, which is what you're referring to. That don't make it any less free.

Wifi "allergies"

[zebadee]

This is really going to test those who are allergic to wifi......who is thinking of the children!

Re:Wifi "allergies"

[arth1]

.....who is thinking of the children!

This is, unfortunately, why i think this is going to be free as in beer, but not as in speech. The risk of someone using it for child porn will likely outweigh any other concerns, and "for all" will be limited to "for all who will register and identify themselves before being accepted as a user", not including those unwilling to sign up, transient people who don't have time to sign up (tourists and people in London for a day), and, of course, unregistered immigrants or children.

As for "blazing 10 Mbps", where does the author live that he calls that blazing? Malawi?

Re:Wifi "allergies"

[zmollusc]

I would consider 10 Mbps to be 'blazing', but that is because I am a Virgin Media customer.

Re:Wifi "allergies"

[TheRaven64]

As for "blazing 10 Mbps", where does the author live that he calls that blazing? Malawi [netindex.com]?

Well, your link says that the average for the UK is 10.65Mbps. For free WiFi, the competition is mobile, and the fastest I've seen advertised for mobile Internet is 7.2Mb/s (which probably means a maximum of 2-3Mb/s in real world use) with small caps, so 10Mb/s with no cap is indeed good. My home Internet is 10Mb/s. I can get up to 50Mb/s (100Mb/s being rolled out soon), but there isn't much point at the moment. My last mile is rarely a bottleneck.

Oh, and the plans I read were for 2Mb/s for everyone, 10Mb/s for Virgin Media customers. This makes sense - if they blanket London with free 10Mb/s WiFi then there's little point in having your own Internet connection for a lot of people...

Re:Wifi "allergies"

[adamofgreyskull]

As for "blazing 10 Mbps", where does the author live that he calls that blazing? Malawi?

Or, according to your own link, any of the other 100 countries (~58% of the list) whose average download speed is less than half of that speed? Only around 19% of the countries on that list have average download speeds of 10Mbps or greater. But yes you're right, 10Mbps in London is probably on the low end of the spectrum. On the other hand, I suspect 10Mbps, to many people living in rural England, or even those in the commuter belt, might be considered "blazingly fast".

Re:Wifi "allergies"

[Just Some Guy]

It's evolution in action. Anyone so high-strung that they have to invent illnesses will die early of stress.

Re:Wifi "allergies"

[tehcyder]

As for "blazing 10 Mbps", where does the author live that he calls that blazing? Malawi [netindex.com]?

That's faster than the average broadband speed in the UK. 8Mbps is fast here, average is 2 or 4.

Re:Wifi "allergies"

[arth1]

That's faster than the average broadband speed in the UK. 8Mbps is fast here, average is 2 or 4.

Not according to the netindex.com link in the parent, which has a measured (i.e. real and not advertised) median speed for UK users of more than 10 Mbps.

For your convenience, repeat links:
http://www.netindex.com/download/allcountries/
http://www.netindex.com/download/2,4/United-Kingdom/

Re:Wifi "allergies"

[Cederic]

As for "blazing 10 Mbps", where does the author live that he calls that blazing? Malawi?

Where the fuck do you live that you can get substantially better than 10Mbps on a mobile device as you walk around? Let alone for no increase in charge beyond your normal home broadband fee?

Re:Wifi "allergies"

[vinayg18]

Beats my cheap-ass 512 kbps connection anyday!

Re:Anonymous

[AHuxley]

Expect many vans, GCHQ tracking and Forward Intelligence Teams to be all over this wonderful "free" gift :)
All the CCTV and databases waiting as you type away, for free, sharing your MAC, ip, passwords, unique browser data and a nice face pic when you look up.
They have your online interests, face, track your car via OCR, your friends with you ... all for free and in the open.
If you make a VoIP call - your voice print too - enjoy your free anonymous laptop use in London.

Would have been nice...

[ctnp]

Just visited London not too long ago. The availability of basic, open wifi reeked of circa 2006 in the States, only got a usable signal in a McDonalds of all places. A free half a MB/s would have been pleasant.

Re:Would have been nice...

[Gordonjcp]

Free wifi has kind of gone by the wayside in the UK. It was a nice idea five years ago, when many people used wifi to get online. Most people now have 3G, which is more convenient since you don't need to actually be near somewhere that "does wifi".

Re:Would have been nice...

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. I was recently in Cambridge, and very surprised to find that the coffee shops which used to give you a wifi password when you bought a drink now have BT OpenZone, so you have to buy minutes.

Re:Would have been nice...

[TheRaven64]

If you're visiting for more than a couple of days, you can pick up a SIM with 1GB or more of data for about £10 and just stick it in your phone or laptop / dongle. Then you don't need to be near a hotspot to get Internet access.

Re:Would have been nice...

[Viol8]

Why should we pay for your free wifi? If you need the internet that bad go to a cybercafe. Do you expect free phone calls too?

Re:Would have been nice...

[heathen_01]

Why should we not pay for free wifi? Do you complain about having to pay for the sidewalks so that visitors can walk around the city?

Re:Would have been nice...

[tehcyder]

Free wifi has kind of gone by the wayside in the UK. It was a nice idea five years ago, when many people used wifi to get online. Most people now have 3G, which is more convenient since you don't need to actually be near somewhere that "does wifi".

Except that 3G is pathetically slow most of the time. Maybe it's diferent in London, but certainly in the countryside in the Uk it's barely usable.

Re:Would have been nice...

[Gordonjcp]

Wouldn't know, haven't been to London for over a decade. It's a shithole.

Out here in the remote Scottish countryside, my 3G connection is usefully fast. I haven't measured the actual speed, but I get a solid HSDPA connection - so anything up to 14Mbps.

Re:Would have been nice...

[tycoex]

In what world does wifi = sidewalks? For every thing you can think of that's "free", there is just as many things that aren't.

Another wifi network...

[BenJCarter]

Is there a successful wifi business model besides 'sell people coffee while they surf your LAN Radio Internet Waves'? 'Cause selling standalone wifi waves as a primary source of revenue seems dicey as a profitable way to provide reliable Intertubes. Too much interference...

Re:Another wifi network...

[TheRaven64]

They're not planning on selling it. They have spare capacity on their last mile infrastructure during the day, and they think that letting people use it for free is good PR, and likely to have a better ROI than a more traditional advertising campaign. Especially since Virgin Media customers will get 10Mb/s everywhere, while everyone else gets 0.5Mb/s. This means that there's now a big incentive to use VM for your home broadband if you are out in London a lot...

Re:Another wifi network...

[Coopa]

As a VM home user living in London with a smartphone, i think this is fantastic.

Re:Another wifi network...

[markxz]

They may have spare capacity, but their cable network mainly serves residential areas, not the centre of cities.

Re:Anonymous

[MacTO]

Woke up on the paranoid side of the bed this morning I see. Granted, we are talking about Anonymous and I suppose that they'd pull out all of the stops for that. Then again ... is Anonymous really naive enough to consistently hit the same access points or leave identifying information on their computers? Now I don't know much about Anonymous, but I'm going to assume that they at least did some research on the Anonymous part.

Public?

[srussia]

TFA subhead says "public", but it is actually a privately owned service.

Re:Public?

[SilentChasm]

Public as in anyone can use it, albeit at slow speeds without paying (though not 56k slow).

Re:Public?

[arth1]

TFA subhead says "public", but it is actually a privately owned service.

Like public houses and public schools, you mean?

Re:Public?

[Chrisq]

TFA subhead says "public", but it is actually a privately owned service.

Like public houses and public schools, you mean?

And I've been called a "public nuisance" but nobody owns me.

Re:Public?

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be from a country that calls a liquid 'gas'

Re:Public?

[Pope]

Short for "gasoline," but your point is...?

Don't believe it 'till you see it.

[MrEricSir]

"Free wifi all over town" was all the rage here in California for a few years. Google promised they'd blanket Mountain View in free wifi, San Francisco had a similar deal.

But in the end, the economics didn't work out so well. Google set up hotspots here and there but it was hardly "all over."

It's hard to complain about getting something for free, but don't believe the hype.

Re:Don't believe it 'till you see it.

[Anonymous Coward]

I was in Helsinki last year. I was pleasantly surprised to see that they have free public WiFi all over town. The difference between that and the Virgin internet is that the Helsinki internet is paid by the city (or tax payers), but Virgin WiFi will be paid by Virgin Media (or their customers). Can't have the socialist approach in the States, I guess!

Re:Don't believe it 'till you see it.

[BasilBrush]

The summary is wrong. Virgin aren't offering the WiFi free. You either have to be a customer of Virgin Media (cable at home) or Virgin Mobile (cellular) to get the WiFi free. Others will need to subscribe or pay-as-you-go for the WiFI, just as they do for BT OpenZone already.

Re:Don't believe it 'till you see it.

[digitig]

The "London" in question isn't in the States.

Re:Don't believe it 'till you see it.

[digitig]

[citation needed]. The RA agrees with the summary.

and London Heathrow?

[mrand]

What are the chances that Boingo (and Heathrow, which surely gets revenue from Boingo) is not going to fight this, after spending the money they have adding wifi to London Heathrow? Anyone know the terms of their agreement (surely it isn't forever)?

Marc

Re:and London Heathrow?

[Dunbal]

I daresay Heathrow is even further than that. It's a good 30 miles if I recall correctly, without looking at google maps.

Re:and London Heathrow?

[BasilBrush]

No,it's definitely a long tube ride away, in that the Piccadilly line can take you all the way from central London to Heathrow. Takes forever through, hence the motivation for the Heathrow Express train service.

Re:and London Heathrow?

[AC-x]

By "London" I assume they mean central London, and given they'll be installing the equipment in their cable junction boxes I doubt places like Heathrow would be covered anyway.

Re:and London Heathrow?

[digitig]

Heathrow is a long tube ride away from "London"

It depends what you mean by London. Heathrow is in London, being in the London Borough of Hillingdon. But I suspect Virgin Media are not planning to put the free WiFi all over London, just all over Central London, in which case you're right. I hope they do mean all of London, though, because it would be handy for me here in the London Borough of Bromley, also on the edge of London.

Re:and London Heathrow?

[digitig]

I daresay Heathrow is even further than that. It's a good 30 miles if I recall correctly, without looking at google maps.

It's 15 miles from Central London, not 30. Maybe you are thinking of London Gatwick, which is 23 miles out, London Luton at 32 miles out or London Stansted at 40 miles out. Or maybe you caught the tube instead of the mainline rail service, in which case it feels like 30.

Re:and London Heathrow?

[adamofgreyskull]

London Heathrow Airport is inside the M25 and only around 20 miles from the "centre" of London but, more importantly, Heathrow lies within the London borough of Hillingdon, which may or may not be one of the "London councils" to which the F article alludes. Without knowing whether Virgin media's plan is for the City of London, Inner London, or Outer London, it's hard to say whether or not it will have any affect on Heathrow.

Re:and London Heathrow?

[Teun]

London's best airport, Schiphol Amsterdam, is a short 355 km (220 mi) away and has for the first hour of use free WIFI.

Re:and London Heathrow?

[digitig]

London's best airport, Schiphol Amsterdam, is a short 355 km (220 mi) away

Just a short flight -- oh, wait...

Re:and London Heathrow?

[digitig]

Last time I was due to fly from Schipol they told me there was no point in waiting, they couldn't get me to my destination, and put me on a train. They had the advantage that my destination was in continental Europe. The time before that the flight was overbooked and was the last flight of the day. There are many reasons for going to or via Schipol, but avoiding delays isn't one of them.

And yes, you could go via train or car, but if you go by train you've got to lug your baggage between trains at London Paddington station, London Kings Cross International station and Brussels Midi station, instead of checking it through. If you go by car you've still got the problem of getting across the channel and about a five hour drive given European driving conditions, and you either have to rent the car or park it at Schipol for the duration of your journey. And neither option is exactly cheap unless you can get one of the very elusive deals.

I live in London and have done a lot of contract work in The Netherlands, so I'm quite used to the journey to Schipol. Trust me, it's a flight.

Re:and London Heathrow?

[tehcyder]

The last time I flew from Heathrow I was waiting 27 hours for the flight departure. In that time I could have easily driven or got the train to Schipol and back!

That's what happen when you arrive a day early.

Re:Anonymous

[arth1]

Anonymous is anyone who calls himself anonymous. I.e. mostly idiots, like followers of any fad, with a few security conscious individuals sprinkled throughout.

Re:Anonymous

[MacTO]

So you're basically saying that the police would be doing Anonymous a favour by culling the idiots?

Re:Future:

[Anonymous Coward]

I took a ride down 8 Mile awhile back. The wife insisted that we return to the interstate as soon as possible.

Speed

[Rik Sweeney]

freely available to anyone at 0.5Mbps

So the same speed as what paying customers receive right now :P

Re:Speed

[KiloByte]

Except that caps are not possible anymore. Which, considering the way most ISPs go, is awesome.

Re:Speed

[AC-x]

Actually credit where credit is due their broadband service has been pretty good for me, I regularly hit 1.5+ meg/sec on my 20mbit line.

Re:Speed

[TheRaven64]

I'm on their cheapest 10Mb/s package, and I can easily get 1.1MB/s, which is about 8.8Mb/s. Not quite the advertised speed, but pretty close, especially when you include protocol overhead. Their customer support is horrible, but their network is pretty good.

Re:Speed

[seinman]

You're only getting 60% of what you've been promised, and you're calling that "pretty good?" I'd call that pretty terrible. I'm in the US on Comcast (so there's two things working against me) and I regularly get 90% to 125% of my advertised line speed.

Re:Speed

[AC-x]

1.5 plus meg/sec in real world usage, most things aren't that fast from the source but a good torrent will give between 1.5 and 2 meg/sec, and I'm assuming that a 20 mbps line will never give you 2.5 meg/sec data rate once control bits are taken into account.

Re:Speed

[AmiMoJo]

That was my first thought too. I have an "up to" 10 meg "unlimited" connection. In the evenings YouTube and iPlayer stutter and freeze all the time, but if I switch over to Vodafone 3G they are fine. My "unlimited" connection also has a download limit of 1.5GB, after which you are sentenced to 5 hours of throttling to less than 20% the speed you pay for.

I would switch but my phone line doesn't work with ADSL and BT don't give a shit so I am basically trapped with Virgin.

Re:Speed

[swillden]

I'm on their cheapest 10Mb/s package, and I can easily get 1.1MB/s, which is about 8.8Mb/s. Not quite the advertised speed, but pretty close, especially when you include protocol overhead. Their customer support is horrible, but their network is pretty good.

Assuming cable modems have the same overhead as POTS modems (which they should, since they use basically the same encoding schemes), you should figure that each byte takes approximately 9 bits to transfer due to framing and error coding. Then there's also the (much smaller) overhead of IP and TCP. So I'd say that 1.1MB/s is pretty much exactly 10 Mb/s -- and maybe a little more.

Re:Speed

[Cederic]

When downloading offpeak from a server that can handle it, I'm getting sustained 2.1 megabytes/sec on my 20mbps Virgin Media service.

Add in TCP overheads and that's close enough to 100% to keep me very happy with it. Happy enough that I've just upgraded to their 50mbps service..

VM get a lot of things wrong, but where I live they deliver on their broadband promises. That puts them way ahead of every xDSL provider I've ever encountered.

Not even considering WiFi congestion...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Blistering 10Mbps?" Surely that's sarcastic? At least around here where I live standard wired offers on the faster end are 100-200Mbps, and on more limited scale, one gigabit. I pay whopping nine euros per month for 100/10Mbps without traffic caps, and It Just Works. No matter how much someone likes WiFi, 10Mbps isn't "blistering" in any positive sense.

Re:Not even considering WiFi congestion...

[Fjandr]

The headline is more than likely directed toward the US demographic, where the only thing higher than about 15Mbps is if you're lucky enough to live in one of the few cities with fiber service.

Re:Not even considering WiFi congestion...

[AGMW]

.. 10Mbps isn't "blistering" in any positive sense.

I'd settle for 10Mbps and, oddly, it's what I pay for from Virgin Media. I do hope all the extra traffic isn't going to even further degrade my bandwidth! That said, getting 10Mbps all across London sounds great!

Next, we want it to be able to pass a connection from POP to POP as we wander around without feeling like it's dropping and re-connecting (just like a mobile phone does) then we lucky Virgin Media people can use skype or somesuch throughout London ... Sur-weet!

Re:Not even considering WiFi congestion...

[dbIII]

I'm about to pay over $1000 per month for 6M/6M in Australia and it was the cheapest deal at that speed available :(
The Australian dollar is a bit more than the US dollar at this point.

Re:Not even considering WiFi congestion...

[Cederic]

What sort of fucking idiot compares wired broadband to the home to free wireless access as you're mobile?

Yes, 10Mbps mobile is blistering, especially when it's at no extra cost and doesn't require you to drag a 28 mile long cable behind you connected to your own home.

Re:Future:

[zoloto]

8 mile sucked

Re:Anonymous

[AHuxley]

"paranoid side of the bed this morning"?
Well lets see http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1041011/MI5-launch-spy-sky-UK-manhunt-British-Taliban-fought-Afghanistan.html for the interest in voice prints.
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/363802/wired-coppers-the-new-technology-behind-old-bill/3 Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR)/CCTV.
and the http://www.independent.co.uk/news/facerecognition-cctv-launched-1178300.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4035285.stm for the joys of tracking your face...
Mix in ideas of the Data Retention Directive, the past skills of the GCHQ, MI5 funding .... you would only need to be seen near one access point.
A laptop user would have to be lucky all the time. A CCTV network only has to be lucky for a few frames...

Re:Blistering?

[Fjandr]

That was my first thought. It may be blistering for the US. The rest of the first world? Not so much...

The Philadelphia Story

[93 Escort Wagon]

I think Philadelphia was the first major city that attempted to do this, following almost exactly the same model Branson is proposing - a free lower-cost tier, and the option to pay for higher-speed service. This was something like four or five years ago. The city contracted with Earthlink, who got started but quickly realized there was no way this wasn't going to cost them a lot of money.

The linked story doesn't provide any detail at all, other than the fact Virgin plans/hopes to do this - so I'm curious to learn how they think they can do this economically. Branson is many things, but he's not a fool with regards to money. He must know about the failure of the Philadelphia project (as well as others).

Re:The Philadelphia Story

[TheRaven64]

First, this has nothing at all to do with Branson. Virgin Media licenses a trademark from him, and that's the extent of his involvement with the company.

They're able to provide this because they have a large consumer last-mile network that is mostly idle during the day. This means that the only cost for them is deploying the access points. The rest of the infrastructure is there already. The free network then serves as an advert for Virgin. If you aren't one of their customers, you get 0.5Mb/s everywhere in London and you're then positively disposed to them for providing a free service. If you are, then you get 10Mb/s everywhere, which gives people in London a strong incentive to switch from BT or other ADSL providers to Virgin for their home Internet connection.

Tourists

[RivenAleem]

This is going to be great for the tourist industry. Being able to advertise that all of London has free wifi will encourage people to visit. I was in Paris recently and trying to find a particular restaurant. I don't have a WAP phone (and if I had I'd be annoyed at the roaming charges) but I has my iPod Touch. I stalked about looking for an unsecured wifi to try load up google maps, and eventually found a McDonalds free hotspot. If what Virgin is planning to offer had been available I'd be able to open my maps anywhere and follow it right to my destination. Add to that Skype/Google voice, email, web searching etc. and it will boost London's attractiveness for tourists.

Re:Tourists

[zippthorne]

That's the thing that bugs me about the iPod Touch: It always assumes you have an internet connection.

You could've made things work by hopping from wifi to wifi if it bothered caching things a little bit. Like, the maps app caching a half-mile radius of its max detail around you, so that the wifi finder app would have a place to paint its cached store. Or the restaurant finder apps caching a few megabytes worth of restaurant info. (which my guess, would cover well over a half-mile...)

Even the smallest iPod touch for sale right now has over 8 GB of space, it can't spare a few megs to cache a little map data? or a few pre-fetched web pages? Seriously?

Re:NOTHING is free.

[Gordonjcp]

Why would taxpayers be paying for something provided by a private company?

Cool just like San Francisco a few years ago!

[dbIII]

Remember how San Francisco announced it was getting free WiFi everywhere?
How did that go?
It was years ago so all you people in SF must just be taking your free WiFi for granted now right?

Actually this time it might just work because it's not being implemented by a completely useless bastard that uses the threat of jail time to solve minor employee management problems.

Low expectations

[polyp2000]

I am (unforuntately) a subscriber in North London to Virgin Medias Cable service (over fibre).
Considering there inabilty to deliver anywhere near my expectations of 20mb i pay through the roof for. (sometimes its as slow as dialup).
I dont hold much hope for them delivering this kind of service.

The trouble right now in the UK is we only have one cable service provider able to deliver very high speeds. Virgin Media
basically have a monopoly on Cable. Virgin were brilliant when i lived north of the Midlands but here I could not recommend
anyone waste their money on their over priced - under-delivered services.

Some other company really ought to roll out a competing cable network in the UK just to give them some incentive to
sort there service out. Sorry Richard Branson but you've really dissappointed me on this occaision

N...

Re:Low expectations

[Tim C]

Just to echo the AC that also replied, I've been on Virgin cable for a couple of years in east London (Elm Park) and have absolutely no complaints at all - I frequently get 1.1MBps or more from my 10Mbps line. Compared to the atrocious time I had on my 8Mbps ADSL line (frequent drop-outs, throttling down to 30Kbps by the equipment at the exchange due to line problems, never connected at more than about 2Mbps and performed like 1Mbps, etc) it's an absolute dream.

That said, I do have friends who have had or are having a devil of a time with their service, and at least one is in north London, so it looks to be a bit of a postcode lottery.

Meh.

[zmollusc]

It won't be all over London, it won't be free, and it won't be public.

Re:Blistering?

[TheRaven64]

Where do you live that has free municipal Internet (3G or WiFi) that gives you 10Mb/s or faster? 10Mb/s isn't that fast for home Internet - it's what I have, and I'm on the cheapest package - but it's a lot faster than I can get when I go more than a few metres from my house...

Love the idea - will believe it when I see it!

[shic]

I've been thinking about reliability of connectivity quite a bit recently... Using a 3G dongle as a backup is one option - but with this option attracting either a noticable monthly charge or requiring a pre-pay to be renewed every 1 or 3 months... it is a bit frustrating... for a service I hope I never need to use. I'm currently wavering on the brink of taking the plunge - the clincher will be if I find time to convince myself that I can configure automatic fail-over satisfactorily.

The first interesting idea that springs to mind is this: if 0.5mb/s is free, what's stopping me buying N wi-fi dongles and channel-bonding their connections to give a ~N/2 mb/s connection, also for free?

Another interesting idea is that if Virgin had this service when I moved in, they'd have me as a customer... The way things actually panned out, I paid a deposit - they jerked me about and gave me absolutely no clue when I'd be given service - so I told them to sling-their-hook and went with Sky (who proved similarly useless - but eventually provided a DSL line.)

The real losers will surely be the telephone companies. Why bother with a pay-go mobile for texts if you can be connected to the web at 0.5mbps everywhere you go?

Re:Love the idea - will believe it when I see it!

[Tim C]

Why bother with a pay-go mobile for texts if you can be connected to the web at 0.5mbps everywhere you go?

Well I for one won't be lugging my laptop (or even a netbook) around everywhere I go just so I can keep in touch with people.

Re:Love the idea - will believe it when I see it!

[ledow]

I don't see that wifi run from a cable companies street-side boxes is all that good as a backup. First, your signal is likely to be appalling (run something like inSSIDer and see how many networks you can pick up from indoors - you'll get you, your immediate neighbours, maybe a couple of others - now where's the nearest street cabinet to you?), second it's likely to be busy and overcrowded in any populated area (even if by accident of homeowner's laptops defaulting to it by mistake, or people sitting in cafes using it instead of the cafe's connection), third it's only going to be as reliable as a cable service, but you have zero recourse if it's worse or is off all the time - so you might as well have just bought a cable package and done it yourself. And fourth - you really think they are going to let you do a lot of the things household do over it (e.g. video, skype, iplayer, Steam, torrents etc.). Also, how do you *know* that you're connecting to the free network and not someone's look-alike proxy that just reads and passes on your packets to the real station?

The school I work for have multiple, redundant Internet connections. We're not talking huge, expensive, leased lines but a couple of bog-standard business ADSL2 lines load-shared via a Linux router. There's nothing special about the setup - any network device (including PPP devices) can be tucked into the routing and automatically handles 1/nth of the routes (when you have "n" devices). With dead-route detection and a couple of little scripts, it handles failover perfectly.

Our "emergency" backup for when everything landline-based goes up the creek is a 3G stick. Seriously. I plug it in, we do a couple of gig a day on it for £2 per day, it routes into the network perfectly using the same routing/sharing on the Linux router (so users aren't even aware anything is different - except once when I forgot to click the "pay for today" button and everyone's websites were redirected to the T-Mobile "pay for today" page), it's more than fast enough (150 machines here and with adequate firewalling/proxying, it copes fine for an emergency measure.

And if you hit traffic limits, you *cough* change the SIM to another pre-pay SIM from another 3G dongle (i.e. those multiple redundant 3G dongles you bought when you first had the idea - maybe even from different carriers) and carry on. We actually use it as an SMS line too - a bit of gammu and you have your own "text in" line for parents/customers/own use to do anything you like (one of our text commands is used to cut all power to the ADSL connections for 30 seconds - perfect when there's a temporary ADSL outage just before the off-site Internet backup starts and you need to kick-start the connections again remotely!).

We had the whole school on 3G for a month when our previous ISP cut us off without warning or recourse for "using more than the average household" (despite clearing being a school - by name and by their own installation - and having a business line). Nobody really cared or noticed we were on 3G, and we're inside the M25, within a main town, so it wasn't like we were the only ones using that cell-tower.

That experience got me buying my own 3G dongle which I take everywhere. Using 3G abroad is a pain that I won't endure, but as an emergency backup in your own country it works wonders and you can easily forget that you're using it. I take it away with me on weekends and all sorts - I've broken down and then Googled the numbers of local services, and my girlfriend has it in the car on long journeys to keep up with Facebook, etc. (we hate smartphones, but love 3G dongles).

I bought my parents one as their "main" Internet connection when my brother left home and they started to go on Facebook to catch up with us. They're still on it, use it for everything they do on the net (including iPlayer and Steam), pay for the entire month every month, and won't even consider paying the same or less than that for the inconvenience of a fixed-line installation with cab

Re:Love the idea - will believe it when I see it!

[Cederic]

Me either. I'll use my wifi enabled mobile phone.

Much like I do now, but without worrying about getting a 3G signal.

Re:NOTHING is free.

[TheRaven64]

Nope. Virgin Media will pay for it out of their advertising budget. They figure that providing free (slow) WiFi to everyone and faster free WiFi to their customers is likely to work better than another poster campaign, and will cost about the same amount.

Congestion fees?

[tenzig_112]

Sounds amazing. Still, I bet there will be a fine for sending your data packets through the downtown area during peak hours.

Re:Blistering?

[mla_anderson]

I live in a small city in a very sparsely populated state which is mostly lacking fiber access, and yet the cheapest broadband I can get is 15Mbps. For very little more I can go to 60Mbps. Your jibe was true 5-10 years ago, but even in the middle of nowhere we have decent service now.

Re:Anonymous

[Anonymous Coward]

Two words: Flash mobbing - especially if instead of pillows, the mob come with their laptops.
Other two words: football games: good luck finding which of the mobile devices allegedly taking photos was actually used for hacking.

A bit of imagination goes a long way.

ok and now

[trum4n]

It won't happen. Free no longer exists, deal with it. Idealism just angers people today, it's near mockery. Also, since when is 10mbps even considered fast? Blistering? Are you kidding?

Re:ok and now

[neminem]

Given that the fastest I can get here is 3, yes, 10mbps would be blistering. I'd kill for 10mbps. Yes, this is sad, I'm well aware. (I miss my college network.)

I love this

[morgauxo]

I love this dual speed free/non-free model. If we had this here I would buy the fast service for browsing use but then would wifi-enable every project, sensors, robots, etc... using the free access. That would be awesome! It's never going to happen in the US though. In this environment I bet if one telecom did this the others could sue and actually succeed at shutting it down based on it hurting their business model or something like that.

Re:Blistering?

[Fjandr]

Yes, and I know of a town of 3000 with 100mbps fiber service. That doesn't make it widespread.

Re:Anonymous

[tehcyder]

Expect many vans, GCHQ tracking and Forward Intelligence Teams to be all over this wonderful "free" gift :) All the CCTV and databases waiting as you type away, for free, sharing your MAC, ip, passwords, unique browser data and a nice face pic when you look up. They have your online interests, face, track your car via OCR, your friends with you ... all for free and in the open. If you make a VoIP call - your voice print too - enjoy your free anonymous laptop use in London.

Yes, because MI5 are literally going to force you to use this service with a gun at your head.

Re:Anonymous

[Pax681]

Expect many vans, GCHQ tracking and Forward Intelligence Teams to be all over this wonderful "free" gift :) All the CCTV and databases waiting as you type away, for free, sharing your MAC, ip, passwords, unique browser data and a nice face pic when you look up. They have your online interests, face, track your car via OCR, your friends with you ... all for free and in the open. If you make a VoIP call - your voice print too - enjoy your free anonymous laptop use in London.

and changing/spoofing a MAC address is soo hard.. erm.... not really
http://www.klcconsulting.net/Change_MAC_w2k.htm
http://amac.paqtool.com/
i could go on... but you get the point

Next on Top Gear

[Quila]

Jeremy sees if he can outrun an iPhone's ability to jump from one public WiFi connection to another in a Lamborghini.

Turns out traffic in London is so bad he can't.

Infrastructure dream

[pablodiazgutierrez]

If they rig all those cameras with wifi hotspots, they're pretty much set.

Dumping

[Jiro]

This is dumping--selling a product below cost (in this case free) to kill competition.

Slashdot posters have already explained how this network is going to be bad for privacy. It's also going to lead to Google and gmail-like situations where the company can shut down the service or make changes at any arbitrary time and in any arbitrary way because you are getting it for free. Of course, the fact that they are dumping the service means that no competitor could offer a service which costs money but doesn't have these disadvantages.

Free WiFi EVERYWHERE in London?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Cor.

That goes along well wif' our surveillance cameras, dunnit'?

So all wireless will be crap

[Andtalath]

Since 5 ghz isn't as widely supported, this means that it will be 2.4 ghz with it's wonderful 3 clear channels.
So this will only work decently if less than three of your neighbors have a WLAN of their own.

Yay...