Conservatives and Liberals voted down the plans for an Oldham-wide free wireless broadband network to the disappointment of Councillor Shoab Akhtar of the Labour group, former mayor and wifi champion along with Cllr Jim McMahon. Free broadband sounds like a great idea that should be a popular as “Free Lunch with Free Delivery”. Indeed it would be great for visitors on business who would no longer have to seek out the nearest coffee shop or burger-chain for free wifi and obviously great for the companies tasked with providing the infrastructure.
However the plans may be moot as many Oldhamer’s may currently be getting free or near-free public wifi bundled with their cable/phone/satellite/mobile - and perhaps may soon be overtaken by the growing access to free wifi in coffee and burger chains .
The first simnilar public project of this scale was announced in Swindon, Wilts last year as a £1M public/private scheme with the council having a 35% stake. Swindon Council and Digital City UK plan on using 1,400 access point to provide blanket coverage for it’s 186,000 citizens to be completed in 2010 – It won’t be free but intends to be cheaper that a typical Internet connection.
There could be a few con’s. Pervasive wifi could pose some interesting Internet security questions. Would everyone in the borough be issued with a login and passkey to secure their connection, visitors too? Even on “secure” wireless networks keys can be readily “sniffed” from the network traffic which being public could not be “stealthed” and hide its network ID. It could be open season for identity theft, not to mention more laptops carried around of left in cars to be physically stolen. (a laptop on standby can be detected by wifi or bluetooth even while secured in the boot of a car)
It would be interesting to see how they are getting along with their plans.