10 Cities With Widespread Wireless Internet

[Entilzha]

And my city is number 1 http://dsc.discovery.com/technology/tech-10/wireless-cities-top.html. We have a very good free wifi coverage.

[Asso]

WOW!

[blacknblue]

In the USA, we lag behind in many ways.

[Pitseleh]

I heard a couple of months ago that they'd try to do that over here, but it's not done yet. I use the free WiFi at school, but they have a lot of pages blocked.

[Alelou]

It was part of the local plans for urban renewal near us (not that we'd get it -- we don't even have cable). But then it fell through, as seems to be the case all over the U.S.

Your local library almost always has wireless access around here, though. Yay, libraries.

[CX]

I prefer a wire, personally.

[Entilzha]

I prefer a wire, personally.

Well you can't have hard lines everywhere. Our national power company Eesti Energia(Estonian Energy) provides internet service using CDMA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_division_multiple_access on 450 Mhz frequency previously used by NMT http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_Mobile_Telephone mobile phones. The max download is 2 Mbit/s and max upload 144 Kbit/s. Because of the frequency
used you don't have to be in line of site like with wifi and it's more safer in terms of security. It's coverage is above 95% of the country. Coverage map dated 20.06.2007 http://www.kou.ee/fileadmin/user_upload/pildid/leviala_extra_large_est.jpg (green-good coverage, yellow-coverage with car antenna, orange-coverage with directional antenna, red-coverage weak extra equipment needed). The coverage should have improved since last year because of added transmission towers. The real cool thing is that they use high voltage electrical transmission lines for the hard lines so they already had the infrastructure. The service name in English is Thunder http://www.kou.ee/index.php?id=82&L=1 (the site is also in English). You can use it while you're stationary or mobile.

[JadziaKathryn]

Question: by "free" do you mean "payed for with taxes" or "free because someone benevolently donated their estate for this purpose?"

Just curious.

[Entilzha]

A lot of businesses offer free wifi in their premises (cafe's, gas stations, super markets, public transport stations, hotels, pub's, sports clubs etc) and there are free wifi areas that are offered by institutions that are funded by taxes like libraries, etc. Wifi.ee site http://www.wifi.ee/?p=area&lang=eng.

[JadziaKathryn]

Internet at the supermarket? Whoa.

[Entilzha]

Theoretically we have wireless internet with the right equipment almost everywhere in my country using the service I talked about before.