National agency wants to create wireless hot spots at up to 50 parks this year, with that number tripling within three years.
OTTAWA—The quiet solitude and refuge from the connected world that many Canadians yearn for will soon be no more in dozens of Canada’s wilderness zones.
Parks Canada wants to create wireless Internet hot spots at as many as 50 of its parks this year, and it expects to triple that number soon afterward.
The agency is requesting tenders from contractors to install Internet access points at 150 locations over the next three years.
Some may see Canada’s national parks as refuges where families can escape the hustle and bustle of modern life without being tethered to online video games, social media and email.
But Parks Canada says visitors want to be able to stay in touch with work, friends and family, stay up to date on the news and connect with social media.
And it notes that modern cellphone coverage is either partial or non-existent at many of its parks and historic sites.
The agency says it expects to offer the service free in some locations, but charge a fee in other cases, where the cost is excessive or the location particularly remote.
Many provincial and private parks across Canada currently offer some type of Internet access.
Ontario’s provincial parks authority has been experimenting with wireless Internet access since 2010 while Manitoba started installing Wi-Fi hot spots at its parks last year.
It’s not yet clear which national sites will offer Wi-Fi access.
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#1 by Fritz on May 24, 2014 - 11:52 pm
I read this item on the crawl on the Sun News channel. The first question I have to ask is, are people so addicted to “Dumb” phones, crackberries, and other gadgets that they can’t leave them at home even on vacation? Whether the RF emissions from these gadgets is a health hazard or not is not the issue, why do we need to have this crap absolutely everywhere? What’s more since it’s Parks Canada doing this it means that we the taxpayers are paying for it.
The cell phone/wireless industry really reminds me of the tobacco industry of the 1920s-1950s. Cigarettes were also sold as being harmless and governments of the time went out of their way to enable the industry, even handing out cigarette rations to servicemen during the war. But at least you were free of tobacco smoke in your own home. Who knows what the effects of this all will be 30-40 years from now?