Wireless is more - London gets wired - sort of!

So it looks like us Londoners may finally be able to get full Wifi coverage across the City at least (see coverage at GigaOm, the BBC and Vecosys)

This one is being set up by The Cloud.

However, unlike some examples of municipal wi-fi, this network will not be free. It is available to a variety of providers who will charge customers a range of fees to log on. Prices such as £12 / month are being bandied around - though Nokia is offering a free first month, though its unclear if strings are attached.

But anything that drops the price of commercial WiFi in London is good news (£30-40 per month, c £4 -6 per hour at a PAYG rate), as at present it doesn't really compete with 3G cards (c £20 - £25pm but far more flexible location wise) and compared with c £1 - 2 / hour in an Internet cafe (and double that at free wifi coffee houses, but the coffee is much better!).

Some people also doubt the usefulness of all this, as its mainly for outside use - it remains to be seen whether it is usable in coffee shops, train stations etc. The BBC article notes that:

...is there really that much demand for open-air surfing? After all, staring at a laptop screen in the sunshine is not a great experience - especially in an area where so many cafes have wi-fi access.

.......

It's hard to see why well-paid City workers would bother with the extra effort needed to make a wi-fi call - but the City of London Corporation believes it will prove attractive to migrant workers on construction sites.

Not to mention Twitterbugs who can then get a real time river of drivel on the go......

However, there are countertrends..in a BBC report they note that
the Pew Internet and American Life Project survey asked 798 US internet users about their wireless habits and sampled almost 2,300 people overall and found that:

While 54% of internet users check e-mail "on the typical day," 72% of wireless users check daily.

Just under half of wireless users get news online every day, compared to 31% of internet users at large.

So...Wireless 'net users clearly are more Wired than wired 'net users.

Now what really does interest us about this is the opportunity for location based services - the trouble with Planet Mobile is anything to do with Data on 'Phones is extortionate, including location services (ergo there aren't any). But this changes the dynamic, perhaps?

And of course who needs Mobile TV when there is WiFi Web TV....that should be an interesting tradeoff!