{"id":4286,"date":"2012-12-12T21:13:58","date_gmt":"2012-12-13T04:13:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/?p=4286"},"modified":"2015-03-11T23:36:08","modified_gmt":"2015-03-12T06:36:08","slug":"hamilton-scraps-free-downtown-public-wi-fi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/?p=4286","title":{"rendered":"Hamilton scraps free downtown public Wi-Fi"},"content":{"rendered":"

CBC News – December 10, 2012<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hamilton is spending $30,000 to get rid of its downtown public wireless internet access service.<\/strong><\/p>\n

With Wi-Fi already provided at many restaurants, coffee shops and hotels, the city’s downtown Wi-Fi service is outdated, unreliable and redundant, councillors heard Monday morning when they voted to discontinue the service.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWe don’t need to be in this service and it was never in our core services, so I’m pleased to see it die a natural death,\u201d Coun. Brad Clark of Stoney Creek said during an audit, finance and administration committee meeting.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The city spends about $90,000 per year to provide Wi-Fi in the core. But the five-year-old technology is obsolete, and upgrading it would cost about $115,000 per year, said Roberto Rossini, general manager of finance and corporate services. The upgrade would include increasing the number of Wi-Fi access points from 63 to 90.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The $30,000 decommissioning fee will cover the cost of removing the city’s public Wi-Fi access points.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Gerry Murphy, chair of the Downtown BIA, said the change will have no effect on downtown businesses.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone has their own providers,\u201d he said. \u201cQuite frankly, I didn’t even know there was a service for downtown. I have an iPad here and it does not pick it up, so I don’t know what the purpose of it is.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Neil Everson, director of economic development, said he hasn’t received any complaints about the city getting rid of the Wi-Fi system.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t see an impact economically,\u201d he said.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Coun. Russ Powers said he took a walk through downtown with his iPad on the weekend and was able to get Wi-Fi access \u201ceven in so-called dead spots.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The city’s public Wi-Fi system has been in place since 2007.<\/strong><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/technology\/story\/2012\/12\/10\/hamilton-wifi.html?cmp=rss<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CBC News – December 10, 2012 Hamilton is spending $30,000 to get rid of its downtown public wireless internet access service. With Wi-Fi already provided at many restaurants, coffee shops and hotels, the city’s downtown Wi-Fi service is outdated, unreliable and redundant, councillors heard Monday morning when they voted to discontinue the service. \u201cWe don’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[252,91,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hotspots","category-removed","category-wifi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4286"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4287,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4286\/revisions\/4287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}