Topic: The Cloud: UK's biggest Wi-Fi network?

[Simon]

The Cloud claims it will create UK's biggest Wi-Fi network

Pubs to be the focus for big wireless push

By Mike Magee: Thursday 06 March 2003, 14:50


INTEL SAID that Inspired Broadcast Networks, in cooperation with Ericsson and itself, will create a huge Wi-Fi network in the UK with thousands of wireless stations all over the country.  

Inspired has already started building the network, which it dubs The Cloud, and will link it to a national network of broadband connected games terminal in cooperation with BT Openzone.

The Cloud will pass over 250 locations in the UK by the end of April, Intel said, and will kick off with free trials services.

And it will start its service in "premium pub locations", already the "business lunch venue of choice in many parts of the country".

Pubs offer an informal environment for people to get drunk meet, said Russell Hoyle, the head of Leisure Link, a The Cloud partner. "As the pub fills up in the evening, Wi-Fi can also be used to link people up to gaming and entertainment services".

And as the customers fill up with beer, they will be able to use their Centrino notebooks to send snottograms to former enemies, lovers and bosses, we'll be bound.

Commercial services will be introduced by the end of June and there will be over 3,000 sites by the end of this year, it claimed.

Currently, it points out, there are less than 200 public access Wi-Fi sites in the UK, the largest in Europe being 500 sites.

Services providers will be able to offer Cloud to customers under their own brand, and that will let cellular carriers and system integrators to start immediately, the firm said.

BT Openzone will offer the first commercial services from the Cloud, and will offer Wi-Fi roaming agreements. Ericsson's role is to provide an open technology, it said.