Editor's Blog: What is city-wide wi-fi?

What is city-wide wi-fi? Probably to each one of us the answer is obvious. But don't count on us all carrying around the same definition.

I mention this after reading the story "London gets free wi-fi network". The service, which will start by covering a length of the Thames and either side of the capital's river, is from the good people at free-hotspot.com, who have among other things backed this publication's Fair Wi-fi campaign in the past.

But how does this differ from other city-wide wi-fi initiatives? Allow me to stick with London as an example that's close to hand.

It seems there is a big difference between the amateur, the free and the paid-for.

Amateur wi-fi can mean anything from someone leaving their home WLAN on for others (let's not get hung up here on whether that's bandwidth sharing on purpose or because someone doesn't understand how to lock down their network), to small coffee shops or others who have basically thrown a wireless router on the end of a bog-standard broadband connection.

But obviously we can't rely on such outlets for our on-the-road needs - though, in general, thank you!

As for free… is anything free? You won't have paid to read these pages but it doesn't mean silicon.com is free. We, like many hotspot operators, have a business model that sees economic value somewhere down the road.

For us, it's in the form of advertising and related fields. For free hotspotters it could be through higher coffee sales (not to get hung up on coffee shops) or providing a service to the community, in the case of councils, which might also see the wi-fi as a way to better network staff in the field or CCTV systems. Many, especially in the US, think of this when they think of 'muni' wi-fi. I'd put a widely written-about service available in the centre of Norwich in this category.

In the case of the latest London network, it's interesting to read what the speeds are for the free offering - in short, they're not superfast. Which brings me to the paid-for services.

Sure, they're not all uniform, even from the same provider. But the idea is that you pay for something that has greater reliability. You can see that in the pitch from The Cloud, which in April launched its pan-City of London offering.

It is interesting that many people don't mention this isn't free, though with decent density of network nodes you'd be sensible to assume that would never be the case.

This wasn't the first offering from the Cloud - they've been wi-fi specialists for years now - but it shows how the phrases 'city-wide wi-fi' or 'muni wi-fi' lead us into certain assumptions. What should we assume? That they span a city or town - and no more? Let's not be surprised there are then a number of variations on that theme.

In not wholly-unrelated news, I'd also like to mention here that atlarge.com - the online service run by the silicon.com team which allows business travellers to read and write about connectivity at the world's airports - now comes with a fortnightly newsletter. Sign up for it here.