beingconnected

London Connecting

Tuesday, 2 June 2009

With over 1,500 WiFi hotspots in the inner London area alone, and outdoor WiFi networks spanning the famous Square Mile of the City, the Canary Wharf financial centre, and parts of the West End, London can boast a significant availability of wireless broadband for mobile devices. These networks compliment the mobile broadband provided by four 3G mobile networks.

Industry data indicates that each mobile internet user is consuming 3 to 5 times more mobile broadband network capacity each year. With the concentration of population London has – some 500,000 people commute daily into the financial district alone – the city requires all the mobile internet capability it can get.

Londoners have been early adopters of mobile services with tens of thousands of consultant and freelance workers roving the city every day. A visit into any of the many McDonalds or Pret a Manger, where free WiFi access is provided by The Cloud, reveals adhoc work groups of laptops. This internet snacking phenomena has become standard practice, adopted by bankers and students alike.

When the outdoor WiFi networks in the Square Mile and Canary Wharf were first launched in 2006 and 2007 few people in the city had WiFi enabled handsets to use them. With the launch of the Apple iPhone in late 2007 and the subsequent introduction of WiFi enabled smartphones by Nokia, Google, SonyEricsson and others, these networks have seen rapid growth in usage. Today the City of London WiFi network, provided and operated by The Cloud, is the highest traffic iPhone zone in the UK. The Cloud operates a bundled WiFi service for the iPhone with O2 in the UK.

WiFi networks, today able to provide access at speeds of between 2Mbps and 10Mbps, are able to provide high speed access over short distances. London is a proving ground for an emerging model of hybrid networking where thousands of WiFi access points in high density urban locations are able to provide high speed access, integrating with the 3G or LTE mobile networks on the device to ensure always-on connectivity for the user.

A contribution to magazine Networking+ - Perhaps unsurprisingly London ranks highly amongst the growing club of global cities that can call themselves digital. With the UK leading Europe in broadband adoption, London leads the UK. The fixed broadband access infrastructure is leading edge, with unbundled DSL, cable and now fibre-to-the-home roll-out. Alongside this network, London has been rapidly developing its position as the global leader in wireless broadband access and creating an environment ready for the mobile internet.