I read some days ago in the Spanish press that Avilés (Asturias) was going to be the first Spanish city to provide free wireless access to Internet. The project will be fully financed through advertising. It will provide around 200 kbps which is not great, but enough to read emails and visit some "light websites".
Given the importance of the Internet for our everyday lives, it sounds amazing that maybe one day we can all access it for free. I don't now yet to what extent this business model can work. This sort of test in a small city is highly regulated. If it works maybe we can think of the same thing implemented in a larger scale in cities like Madrid, London, ...
I was living for some time in Leiden (The Netherlands), where there was free public WiFi access to the Internet, fully financed by the local government. This makes me wonder what is most important: government financing public WiFi network in most important cities or broadband access to every corner of the country as the British Government announced weeks ago?
I really hope this sort of experiment in Aviles spreads through the rest of Spain and Europe!
I think local goverments should certainly fund broadband extensions into more remote regions. I hope the UK Government fulfills its plans.
ReplyDeleteIts a little optimistic to think such projects can be funded through advertising though, as in every downswing of the world economy the projects will be underfunded. Better to use tax payers money - otherwise this will all be used to buy insolvent banks ( not my preferred use of my hard earned tax contributions)