Vancouver planning to expand its free public Wi-Fi network
Vancouver residents looking to save a few dollars on their smartphone bills may be pleased to hear the city is expanding its free public Wi-Fi network.
The expanded network will be among the largest in North America, the city said in a news release Thursday. Representatives from the city and Shaw Communications will announce details Friday morning.
Vancouver first began installing free Wi-Fi in 2015 at six community centres and golf courses before expanding to 43 civic sites. Telus won the initial five-year contract but both Shaw and Telus were approved as vendors pre-qualified to compete for potential further expansion of the service.
Neither users nor the city are paying for that service, whose installation and maintenance the city estimated would have cost $4 million over the five-year contract term.
The city-funded Vancouver Public Library already has hugely popular Wi-Fi spots, used by more than 80,000 cardholders in 2016.
The introduction of city Wi-Fi caused a significant drop in library Wi-Fi use at some branches co-located with community centres, according to the library’s 2016 operating report.
Surrey, Richmond, Burnaby and New Westminster are also among Metro Vancouver cities with free public networks in place.
In early 2016, New York announced its free, gigabit LinkNYC network. The city began replacing old pay phone kiosks to install 7,500 “Links” to make it the largest civic Wi-Fi network in North America. Web-browsing features, however, were removed months after the project launched due to users downloading too much porn.
Seattle shuttered its costly, taxpayer-funded Wi-Fi in 2012 when confronted with a $100,000 upgrade bill on a project into which it had already sunk $50 million over seven years, according to the Seattle Times.
Free Wi-Fi is currently offered in more than a dozen Canadian cities, including in Moose Jaw, Sask., Toronto, Ont., Montreal, Que. and Moncton, N.B. Extensive public Wi-Fi networks have been rolled out in major cities across the globe such as Barcelona, Seoul, Paris and San Francisco.