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What a wonderful WiFi world it would B (T)

Another tipping point now in sight: this time it’s the WiFi clouds we’ve been craving for. Sitting in a café yesterday without a single unlocked or public wifi point made me realise how far we still are from actually having ubiquitous wireless access. Five years time? This will be a public ‘good’, a utility as readily available as water or power sockets. Today’s news from BT that they’re setting out to create what the FT’s calling the ‘world’s largest wifi community’, is significant because they’re one of the few telcos with the weight to pull it off. The new stake they took in Spanish FON is probably part of this, but the real smart thing is that the plan suggests opening up part of the BT home hubs to become public hotspots: savvy, lateral, highly disruptive, and, if they can pull it off, utterly brilliant.

More on the FT about BT's bold wireless plans  |  BT and net calling  |  Actual arrests for stealing unlocked wifi bandwidth

October 05, 2007 |

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