Tim Almond

Manchester Plans Free City Wifi

First off, it’s no more free than the NHS that people repeatedly tell me is free. Someone’s going to have to fit the infrastructure, maintain it and run the servers. It’s going to cost millions.

"It would help small businesses with web access and our citizens with access to information."

What business that could do with web access doesn’t already have it? Is anyone going to tell me that a business isn’t going to spend £13 a month on Tiscali or £0 on one of the free broadbands because they can’t afford it? And of course, bear in mind that they’ll have an indirect cost of paying for this Manchester Wifi.

As for citizen access, that’s very laudable. Making the internet available to all is something desirable. One problem - how are they going to get on to it? Are Manchester going to provide them with PCs with wireless cards and provide them with regular servicing?

The network, inspired by projects in San Francisco and Amsterdam, would cover 90% of Greater Manchester and reach up to 2.2m people.

Both of which were funded by private industry. In the case of Amsterdam, it’s a private business called Hotspot Amsterdam which operates by subscription - so not everyone gets it for free. San Francisco’s wifi is being operated by Google for free, which Google seem to be using as R&D. So, actually, nothing at all like the Greater Manchester project.

The price of broadband is constantly dropping. There are free, bundled deals with Orange, Sky and Carphone Warehouse. BT are constantly being nudged by OFCOM to lower the wholesale rates.

How about just leaving this one to the market?

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Tags: Politics, Technology //