Fredericton Unwired

Fredericton becomes the first municipality-wide Wi-Fi network in Canada. Isn’t Montréal supposed the be a high tech capital? Where’s our project??

The first phase of the project has already been completed.  This means that Wi-Fi technology is now available in much of the Citys downtown and at the Fredericton Airport.  By the end of the year, the network will be expanded to include the Knowledge Park, Main Street and the balance of the downtown.  In the future, coverage will include all of the Citys business corridors and public spaces.

On tv the maritimes are an hour later but how many years ahead for WiFi?

4 Comments

John November 28, 2003

Have you been to Fredericton? It’s tiny. Take away UNB and the government and there ain’t much left so I think WiFi-ing up the joint wouldn’t take too long.

Patrick November 28, 2003

I haven’t been but yeah, I figured it was small. Still, I’m not expecting the whole island but I don’t know, the public spaces in the Montréal souterrain? Parts of St-Laurent or St-Denis or Mont-Royal with all the cafes, restaurants and bars? Carré St-Louis? Duluth? Prince-Arthur? St-Paul right next to the Cité du Multimédia? Nothin’

Gregory January 9, 2004

THe fact that Fredericton is a small city is meaningless. Most of the cities here in the maritimes have a larger size in terms of area than most metropolitans and include rural areas. Fredericton is not only serviced by free internet from the city, but we also have a Wi-Fi network provided by brunnet, http://www.brunnet.com which encompasses not only the city core, but also the rural areas where houses are few and far between, outside the reach of cable internet, which is usually 20 km of line.

Patrick January 9, 2004

Gregory, how does that work? I looked at their site and they don’t give much details. WiFi only has a range of only a few hundred meters in the best conditions how does it help where lines are 20km away as you say? I have the impression that they install a Wifi antennas connected to the phone system. A kind of dsl where the last part is wireless. Correct? If that’s the case, why not simply offer dsl? Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s fantastic. I’m just wondering why.

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