London Installing Largest Free Wifi Network 158
aesoteric writes "London's Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea districts will be delivered the largest free wi-fi zone in Europe. The plan is to provide the service in time for the 2012 London Olympics, which start in late July, to allow visitors and residents to get more out of their stay."
Re:All the better to watch you with, my dear (Score:4, Informative)
I'm guessing it won't be anonymous.
I can't imagine how the identification would work.
TFA
In Westminster alone, it could be providing internet access to half a million tourists each day, 250,000 residents and 500,000 workers.
Half a million of tourists - would they plan to ask for a "tourist id" for granting access?
Re:All the better to watch you with, my dear (Score:4, Informative)
Your mac address is as easy to set as you IP on Linux and unlike IP address on wifi you can pick whatever you like (though most are obviously fake).
Take your pick:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Changing_Your_MAC_Address/Linux [wikibooks.org]
Its also pretty easy on any other *NIX
Just windows does not come with a built in to do it.
Re:All the better to watch you with, my dear (Score:5, Informative)
Depends on your hardware. Recent intel "centrino" wifi chips can not change their MACs- I found this out personally because the driver under linux lets you try to change the MAC, but if you try to use it with one of these new chips it just fails to work over the air.
Re:All the better to watch you with, my dear (Score:4, Informative)
Boroughs (Score:5, Informative)
They're "boroughs", not "districts". Jeeze.
Re:say what? (Score:5, Informative)
Wtf? Free wifi in a European country?! Does not compute. I was almost certain that "Free", "Insert any service here", and "" could NEVER coexist in the same sentence.... Go to London, pay eleventy pounds for parking, pay to use restroom, pay to breathe air, pay to blink eyes, pay to use sidewalk, but Wifi is now freeeee! Oh wait, only because of the Olympics.
The parking (and congestion) charges are to discourage car use. Many Londoners, including me, don't even own a car.
But there's plenty of free things to do in London -- more than any other city I've ever visited. Some great museums: the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) at South Kensington are free. So is the British Museum, in Holborn. The Museum of London (in the City) is free, as is the Imperial War Museum (Lambeth). That's just the biggest ones, there are at least 20 more not-insignificant free museums.
There are markets, old buildings (cathedrals etc), big art galleries, parks, palaces, the river, theatre, many small gigs are free... and that's just the normal, year-round stuff. There should be free one-off events, though it's obviously worth planning if you want to see something in particular.
Try these websites:
http://www.visitlondon.com/tag/free-attractions [visitlondon.com]
http://www.timeout.com/london/feature/1424/free-london [timeout.com]
http://www.daysoutguide.co.uk/free-london [daysoutguide.co.uk]
http://londonist.com/tags/lotclist [londonist.com]
Re:VOIP instead of roaming (Score:3, Informative)
O2 is one of the better UK providers in that respect. My iPhone was locked originally, but I went with O2 because at the time (mid-2010) they said they would unlock it properly at the end of the contract period. No jailbreaks, no risk of bricking after software updates, etc.
Now it turns out that they will unlock it even before the end of the contract (though I'm still on the hook for the monthly fee till the end, of course). Just have to ask them.
O2 are great for their signal, but their pricing does take the piss.
When you've finished your contract; maybe try Giffgaff [giffgaff.com]. There's no phone support (it all online), so they're a lot cheaper (£10/mo for unlimited data and text, and 250 mins) - and they still use the O2 network. The support you get from the community is astounding, and they do pay people back quite a lot for helping out.
They've even got a wiki [giffgaff.com] to help you unlock your phone. Definitely worth a look.
Re:say what? (Score:4, Informative)
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, and reply courteously.
That's great that you, you know, live in London. As in, you can afford the outrageous cost of living there,
Other than housing, most essential costs aren't much different to the rest of the country (food, fuel, transport, etc). Socialising is more expensive, but outside the centre it's not that much more.
and take what must be an exquisite pleasure to lecture the rest of us on transportation.
You'll get a better experience of London if you use the public transport, rather than try and drive everywhere. Driving in London is frustrating -- it's difficult to find parking, there's a *lot* of traffic, the streets are narrow and dense, there are many one-way restrictions. That's the way things are here.
(Would it be lecturing to advise a European against taking Amtrak and buses round the USA, if they have a limited time for their trip?)
I love how you recommend thieves' dens of stolen merchandise (you called them 'museums' I believe, an interesting bowdlerism if there ever was one) with a straight face.
So don't visit the British Museum. The other museums have completely different collections. The Museum of London, for example, has artefacts from London, often from excavations, or donations.
Surely, being a well-heeled Londoner, you must be acquainted with the idea that if something is free, then it must be worthless. Otherwise, the Great Unwashed will be all over it.
You clearly don't know this city, and I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.