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Paddick pledges free wifi for London
BRIAN PADDICK, the Liberal Democrat mayoral candidate for London, has vowed to provide free wireless internet access from all public spaces in London.
He wants to close the gap between the digital haves and have-nots, he said in a statement today. He also wanted to help the poor get computer access, he said.
Free wifi would be installed in public places in 10 inner-city London boroughs, he said. He didn't say which two inner boroughs would get left out, but we can assume that every sharp suited merchant banker in the City of London is using 3G already.
The other twenty London boroughs would only be given free wifi if a public consultation supported the idea.
He gave but an inkling of how he would pay for it, saying he would rope the private sector in to help the councils turn London into "the first wifi capital in the world".
Finding wifi in Greater London can sometimes feel like trying to find a conscience in the City. Starbucks charges £5 an hour for internet access in its shops. Should you want to support a local business, though, you can find one providing free wifi already if you look hard enough.
Look 'ere, for example: Free London Wifi - Mapped.
SuperPlod Paddick said he also wanted to pull people together to get computers to the digital have-nots. How long have people been pledging to do this? Olympic Ken and Bumbling Boris, the other mayoral candidates, were not available for comment. Neither was Starbucks. µ
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Free wifi is available at Coronation Park in Ormskirk, Lancashire and at various locations in Liverpool. Certainly in the park the wifi connection is used by students who are on limited budgets and wish to look up information or make free IP phone calls. The connection is also used by many others such as tourists who do not particularly want to be armed with hundreds of leaflets. Wireless devices are entering the marketplace all the time and the costs of these devices will reduce over time as more wireless networks are put into place. This is obvious if wifi is free to access.
Amanda Shaw - www.letsgowifi.co.uk
Second hand laptops should be cheap if you can buy a new laptop for 333Euro
Anyone else see the flaw in this logic...

Free Wifi in public areas so the poor can get online...

So the poor can use the intarweb, assuming they're not too poor to own a wifi enabled mobile device, like a laptop, iPhone, iPod Touch... None of which I imagine comes high on the list of must-haves for the poor!

I guess they could get lucky and mug someone with an N95 or iPhone and get some free usage until the battery runs flat.

Or is Mr Liberal nice idea, haven't really thought it through though, going to give everyone a free Eee? If so I'll put on my oldest jeans (oh, already have) and be standing outside his house with my arms out stretched. :-)

Personally I'd love to see our sole permitted anti-war protester camped in Parliament Square being able to provide a real time blog.