Bell Canada Turns Payphones into Public Hotspots 262
turing0 writes "Bell Canada yesterday announced a trial of a new public wifi hotspot service - currently free - with locations in either airports, railway stations or bus terminals in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Kingston. Bell has adopted an interesting twist on the hotspot in that they have built a steel armored case, in which to house the AP, a DSL modem and power supply, which is the exact dimensions of a payphone -- and mounted the whole thing in place of a single phone where there are banks of them such as you see in airports and bus terminals or subways. According to this article in the Globe and Mail Bell has still not determined the pricing model."
turing0 continues: "I attended the press conference at Toronto's Union Station, Track F, where I took a close look at the AP box which was mounted quite securely to a bank of payphones, and I was pretty impressed at how solid it appeared as various journalistic hacks took turns trying to pry the AP off the wall under the watch of Bell execs and a Bell phone tech. Bell is using Cisco AP1200's in the box as well as Alcatel ADSL modems with a 3Mb/Sec ADSL/ATM backhaul to the internet according to the Bell tech present. Various Bell types were wandering about with a pretty diverse collection of hardware such as Apple iBooks, Compaq PDA and IBM Thinkpads with 802.11 cards from Proxim, Cisco and Symbol as well as Dlink and SMC. Great use of a fully amortized asset (phone banks) and a very interesting spin on how to generate new revenue from a dying cost center - the payphone biz. Plus the added benefit of not having to negotiate new agreements with property management and landlords. Smooth move for Bell. Why didn't I think of that? Payphones, though declining in numbers, are still pretty much ubiquitous and are served with power as well as a good solid mounting location for the AP. In the final deployment Bell said that they would also be mounting AP's in the plenum and riser infrastructure of selected buildings should the full roll-out of the Accesszone product proceed. Is Bell Canada the first ILEC to recycle payphones?"
Re:Congrats on a Great Idea . . . . at least origi (Score:2, Informative)
They (Bell Canada) already have those little cubbie-holes with ethernet jacks at airports, etc, so execs can plug in and surf the net through a really limited proxy. It was like 20 bucks for a half hour last time I saw 'em at Pearson Airpot.
Y'all keep dreaming of your free broadband.
wifi = Great (Score:5, Informative)
Link (Score:5, Informative)
Should be interesting competition for starbucks and the like who wanted to come to Toronto and setup hotspots.
Picture (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Congrats on a Great Idea . . . . at least origi (Score:2, Informative)
I see the price getting higher and higher for less and less service.
Comcast used to offer 2M down, 768k up as its regular service. Now the regular service is 1.5/128, and the aforementioned is the 'Pro' service, at a lofty premium.
Bell Canada, IIRC, now has monthly bandwidth limits on their once 'unlimited' DSL services, and charge by the byte once they're reached.
After all the
It's all downhill from here on in.. Enjoy the ride.
Don't expect a free ride from Ma Bell (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Well, you would think... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Well, you would think... (Score:3, Informative)
During the Bell AccessZone Wi-Fi pilot, users with 802.11b enabled devices will be able to gain free access to Bell's hotspot service in the
following high traffic locations: Toronto's Union Station; Via Rail Panorama lounge in Montreal's Central Station and Toronto's Union Station; the departure area at Montreal's Dorval International Airport; Kingston's Confederation Park and Marina supported by the Kingston Economic Development Corporation; and Kingston's St. Lawrence College. AccessZone is also available in the Air Canada Maple Leaf lounges at Pearson International Airport (Terminal 2), Dorval International Airport, and the Calgary International
Airport and will be installed in all other Maple Leaf Lounge locations. Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital and Kingston's Frontenac Public Library will also be deploying a Bell AccessZone location in the coming weeks. Other pilot locations will be introduced over the pilot period, which is expected to run until the spring of 2003.
Also from Bell (Score:5, Informative)
I've never used one of these Internet phones, but they're basically a regular phone with a larger colour LCD display, keyboard and laptop-like pointing device. It's a pretty cool idea, but I've never seen anybody use it and I wonder if very many people would pay for wireless Internet access in a train station where 99% of the people don't wait long for a train during rush hour.
Also of note, Bell's ISP, Sympatico, has stand-alone pay per minute Internet access terminals in the station. Why would Bell compete with itself on so many levels?
Re:How do you take payments on this? (Score:5, Informative)
1) Your laptop/PDA/whatever requests an IP address via DHCP.
2) Access point hands out IP address, makes a note against that IP address that "has not paid yet"
3) At this point, all that you can do is access HTTP and DNS.
4) You point your browser at any web site - let's say http://slashdot.org for grins.
5) DNS succeeds.
6) Your computer does an HTTP GET.
7) Access device sees you've not paid yet. Sends HTTP REDIRECT to https://fork.it.over.to.me
8) Your laptop looks that up. Gets an IP address.
9) Your laptop requests page.
10) Page comes up - input credit card here.
11) You do so. Access device marks you has "paid for 1 Hour". Ports open up.
12) You again try
Karma Whoring (Score:2, Informative)
Re:the answer to how to charge is easy... (Score:2, Informative)
Location, Location, Location (Score:3, Informative)
There's a list, with more promised in the near future, but for now its..
Toronto, Ontario: Union Station Panorama Lounge, Union Station
Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounge, Pearson International Airport, Terminal 2
Kingston, Ontario: Confederation Park and Marina St. Lawrence College
Montreal, Quebec: Panorama Lounge, Central Station
Dorval Airport, Departures Area Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounge, Dorval Airport
Calgary, Alberta: Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounge, Calgary International Airport.
So we have airports and train stations, not the kind of place to sit for hours just to serve up some mp3's, but since the 'Gare Central' is 5 minutes away on the Metro, I'm gonna head down this weekend and see what kinda speeds I can get
Re:This might prove interesting (Score:1, Informative)
Not quite a monopoly, in the strictest sense (Score:3, Informative)
Bell is definitely pervasive in Canada, but (for the Americans who don't know, but still care) thankfully you don't HAVE to go with them on a number of aspects.
You can go with alternative long-distance companies; they may or may not have to pay Bell for the "privilege," but if you're not a Bell supporter then you can at least avoid paying the whole enchilada.
Cellphone service can be provided by Rogers [rogers.com] or Telus [telus.com] if you're so inclined. Personally, if I needed a cellphone, I think I'd go with Telus... any company that markets their products with squirrel monkeys can't be all that bad. :)
With satellite, you do have at least one other choice, StarChoice [starchoice.com]. You can also always go with cable, if you're willing to deal with the cable company (Rogers for me, often Shaw elsewhere or Videotron in Quebec).
ISPs, now there's a sore spot. In terms of DSL, the only alternatives are generally small, local services who still have to pay a bit to use Bell's lines. It's either that or cable (again). On the other hand, I know that at least one DSL provider in Ottawa supposedly goes without a transfer cap.
So you do have alternatives in most areas, but more often than not Bell is there in some capacity, or else you go with the dominating cable company in your area. At least Bell is better than AOL Time Warner down in the states, who practically dominates what Americans see and hear...
Re:Location, Location, Location (Score:2, Informative)
however i used to comute between TO and Ottawa on a weekley basis, and found my self killing a few mins ie:30-45 in the lounge all the time.
i cant see a better addition to the free drinks, free computers, free mag's, and NOW FREE WI-FI.
its not the greatest test area, but u can be sure its not going to get haxored by some leet script kiddy.