Toronto Hydro Launches Free Wi-Fi Network

k. writes to let us know about the launch Wednesday of Toronto Hydro's city-wide Wi-Fi network, at 6 square kilometers said to be the largest in North America by the time rollout is complete in December. The service will be free for 6 months and then will cost $29 (Canadian) per month, $10 for a day, or $5 for an hour. Toronto Hydro gets around fears of the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse by requiring use of one's cell-phone number as the user ID.

Whoo.

[tygerstripes]

Hmm. Impressive? The City of Norfolk [norfolkopenlink.com] in Norwich, UK, would beg to differ [bbc.co.uk]. To whit:

a 4km radius from County Hall, as well as key sites to the east and west of the city: Broadland Business Park , University of East Anglia , Norwich Science Park and Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital. In addition 28 hotspots in South Norfolk will be enabled shortly.

That's pretty decent coverage for a back-water city in UK farmer country, and it's free. Kind of throws some context into this article, I reckon.

Re:Disposable cell phones...

[Thansal]

I worked in RS for a year or so.

Walk in, ask for prepaid phone, give false info (no ID checked), pay with cash, walk out. I have sold phones to people I am relativly sure were ussing them for illicit goals, however I can't simply not sell them the phone as that is illegal :D

On top of that msot prepaid phones can have their phone numbers changed with little or no hastle!

If that isn't disposable, I don't know what is.

Just to clarify...

[k4_pacific]

Toronto Hydro is the power company, not the water company. Just in case you were wondering.

Free for limited time

[Midnight Thunder]

It should be noted that it is only free for the initial trial period. Then, if experience of other city Wi-Fi solutions is anything to go by, then the hourly rate will be more than a days worth of home DSL.