The Wi-Fi cloud is finally descending on our city and we have to celebrate. Toronto Hydro is announcing a new service that will blanket the city with wireless Internet access. Rumour has it that one of the city's largest provider of wireless services, Ted Rogers, is not happy. We can't feel too sorry for Rogers and Bell though. They have long known that ubiquitous connectivity is inevitable and I'm sure they've planned for it.

Now, they may go to the CRTC and claim that government institutions like city electric companies should not compete with the private sector in the convergent media space. Normally I'd agree. The government is a poor supplier of non-essential consumer services. But this is different. Internet connectivity is as much an essential part of life in the 21st century as water and electrical services. Cities around the world are opening their wireless gateways. If Torontonians don't have the same kind of infrastructure then we'll be at a competitive disadvantage. So, if government makes the decision to impede the democratization of wireless there is a good chance that our economy will suffer in the long term.

There are other reasons to celebrate. The poor will now have equal access to wireless. There will be an explosion of products and services for the new market. How will this affect you?

1. Now’s a good time to read or re-read Cory Doctorow’s Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (Tor, 2005; also available electronically at http://craphound.com/someone/ ). The free wireless network in Doctorow’s novel (set largely in Toronto’s Kensington Market) is a guerilla network put together by anarchists and street punks out of salvaged parts found in dumpsters.

   Their project is given strength by a network guru (representing a mildly fictionalized Bell) who admits that decades are likely to pass before a similar kind of network might become a serious part of the corporate business plan. He adds, “And you come in here, and you ask me, you ask the ruling Bell, what advice do we have for your metro-wide free info-hippie wireless dumpster-diving anarcho-network? Honestly—I don’t have a f*cking clue. We don’t have a f*cking clue. We’re a telephone company. We don’t know how to give away free communications—we don’t even know how to charge for it.” (133)

   I, too, am intrigued at the prospect of a new player in the high-speed / wireless market, but am not sure it can manage to do any better than the existing providers. Unless there’s a price war, I don’t believe it will be truly inexpensive. The projected coverage of the ‘downtown core’ sounds a little too much like a planned blanketing of companies and condos whose occupants can afford the access they already get. I’ll start believing in the project when it reaches Flemingdon Park and Lansdowne at Dupont, and when Toronto Hydro starts subsidizing the cost of inepensive laptops so that those living below the poverty line can actually access the wireless air surrounding them.

   It’s not that a Toronto Hydro wireless venture would do any worse than the existing providers. I’m just not sure it will do any better.

   Posted by Amy Lavender Harris  on  03/07  at  10:38 AM

2. I think this announcement is a good thing, and it could be a great thing. Lets just hope that the people making the decisions bridge the gap from good to great.

   I agree with Amy who commented about the relatively small footprint of the planned network, really only covering downtown Toronto.

   A plug for Wireless Toronto’s blog, where there’s lots of discussion going on around the questions this announcement raises for Torontonians.

   Posted by Patrick Dinnen  on  03/07  at  02:09 PM

3. Toronto Hydro providing WiFI is like Enwave providing cooling water for air conditioning- a great idea destined for poor execution. Create an expensive board of directors full of ex-polititians who know nothing about energy and charge such high prices that there is little incentive to switch, and take forever to build the infrastructure. R C Harris is spinning in his grave.

   Posted by Lloyd Alter  on  03/07  at  07:39 PM

4. I prefer to view this as a positive. The more players in the market for any product/service and the cheaper it will become, particularly in a fairly mature market like Telcom where the risk of monopoloy through acquisition is small.

   Yes it’s true that by September, only Spadina-Jarvis, Front-Bloor will be covered. Hydro said they plan on rolling out coverage over the rest of Toronto within 3 years. That of course will be entirely contingent on a big ‘if’ – If a public utility can successly operate and maintain a wireless network, and handle billing and support like a telcom. I think they can do it. They’ve been operating their downtown fibre-optic network in a similar manner for some time.

   In the end, Toronto will be pioneers in this initiative. No other major city in the world will have such coverage, so we need to cut Hydro and City Hall a bit of slack here, due them for being visionary enough to try and pull this off.

   Posted by Sheldon Winsor  on  03/08  at  01:59 PM

5. Come on…share the love. Can’t you stick something on top of the CN Tower and blanket us down here in Buffalo with wireless.

   Excellent news…

   Posted by david  on  03/11  at  01:38 AM

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