Peter Wilson
Sun
A city-wide WiFi system for Vancouver is under study, but there is no complete plan laid out like the one announced Wednesday for Toronto that involves Toronto Hydro covering the entire city.
Vancouver Councillor Peter Ladner said that staff at Vancouver city hall are looking at the matter “and we are eagerly awaiting their report back on how we could do it here and the best structure and what we could hope to achieve by it.”
Ladner said that the fact that Toronto Hydro was doing it would suggest that such a system would be a piece of basic civic infrastructure that all cities are going to have to provide to some degree.
“It’s what people expect of city amenities,” he said.
However, neither BC Hydro nor Telus seem to be taking more than a wait-and-see interest in a city-wide WiFi system for Vancouver.
“We have no immediate plans for this,” said Hydro media relations manager Elisha Moreno. “There may be a future opportunity, but currently not now, just because of questions of logistics and economics.”
Moreno said that its not feasible right now for BC Hydro to run Internet over its lines, which would be a requirement to set up a WiFi system in Vancouver.
“We’re watching it and watching it with interest right now,” Moreno said.
Telus, which already has large WiFi hot spots in place around Vancouver, at such places as Vancouver International Airport, conference centres and businesses, is now offering a high speed EVDO system that would substitute for a city-wide WiFi network by allowing users to connect cell phones and laptops to the Internet through Telus’ wireless network.
© The Vancouver Sun 2006
