Toronto Hydro to Install Wireless Network in Downtown Toronto

March 7 (Bloomberg) -- Toronto Hydro Corp. will install Canada's largest wireless-Internet network across downtown Toronto by year's end to compete with providers that offer the services in hotels, buildings and coffee shops.

A subsidiary will build the network on the city-owned utility's streetlights, covering 6 square kilometers (2.3 square miles), Toronto Hydro said today. The network's installation will cost less than C$10 million ($8.71 million), utility President David Dobbin said. He gave no further details about the cost.

Toronto Hydro's network will compete with BCE Inc., Rogers Communications Inc. and Telus Corp., which offer the service known as WiFi in fewer than 200 locations across the city, Dobbin said. The cost at these so-called hot spots is often paid by the company, not the user. The utility, which distributes most of the power to Toronto, will charge customers after a six-month trial.

"To say that the WiFi market in this city is currently well-served is just, quite frankly, not true,'' Dobbin told reporters today in Toronto. He didn't comment on the number of subscribers the utility wants to attract or what the rates would be after the trial.

Toronto Hydro's WiFi network will be Canada's largest, bigger than others in Ottawa, Whistler, British Columbia and Waterloo, Ontario. The service gives customers Internet access via laptops, personal-digital assistants and video-game systems from park benches and office buildings.

The company plans to expand the network to the entire city within three years, joining London, San Francisco, Philadelphia and other cities. These cities also charge for the service.

Super. Intel's financing municipal wi-fi in its corp town in New Mexico, too. Moving along...

Just piggybacking a news post with this one I just read.

Use of RFID to spread a virus. Kinda interesting. The neat aspect they mentioned, sticking that thing in a pet and have it roam around spreading the virus to anything that scans it.

heh, that virus thing can only happen if the data read of a RFID is treated as executable data. and i realy hope that noone is that stupid...

Well, hopefully no one will be that stupid now that it's known that you can write a virus with only 127 characters...

true on both counts (alltho that 127 byte virus scares the hell out of me). but there are stuff like managed code and similar to take care of that...

allso, most tag readers will be running real time programming. a memory error there will take down the whole unit, not just install a virus (alltho putting a 99% software RFID reader on top of windows makes my neckhair stand)...