news
Toronto’s Community Internet
Earlier this month, a few volunteers from Wireless Toronto got together at the LinuxCaffe. Some people have heard how Toronto Hydro is rolling out free wireless access in the city core for 6 months, but Wireless Toronto has been offering free hotspots since May 2005. Armed with a wireless laptop, Torontoist tried out the service.
Inside the LinuxCaffe, a coffee house on the corner of Harbord and Grace that also, as a service, sells downloaded copies of the open source Linux (the current going rate is $6), a half-dozen volunteers have gathered for Wireless Toronto.
Wireless Toronto is an all-volunteer organization formed in May 2005, dedicated to creating free hotspots in Toronto. “We’re trying to focus on public and publicly accessible places”, one volunteer, Michael Pereira, says. And they’ve achieved notable recent successes with 26 current locations, including their most popular location, Dundas Square.
Logging on is extremely simple. Step-by-step instructions are provided on their website. Torontoist was up and online in under a minute. All that is needed is a working e-mail address. Each location has a start page specific to that location, with local community information, upcoming events and pictures from the neighborhood.
Testing proved the quality of the connection to be good quality. Speed is quite snappy in the locations tested. “We did have one guy complain about our download speeds,” Michael says. “Amusingly, he had downloaded over 3
gigs of stuff.” The hotspots cover quite a large area as well. Torontoist was able to connect to one hotspot at the Roastery Cafe from across Richmond Street. While access is more than enough for Email, casual web browsing and chatting, hard-core downloaders might want to stick to their home connection. “We encourage people to have good WiFi etiquite, (either tipping or buying a drink/bite to eat) and not leech,” Michael says in an Email interview.
The group is always looking for suggestions for new hotspots, but as they’re starting to grow, they’re looking for users to push their favourite venues to sign up. They’re also looking for volunteers to help out with all sorts of tasks. The meeting at the Linux Caffe was called for the very low-tech task of folding informational pamphlets to hand out at venues, for example. The Wireless Toronto website has more information. Thanks to [email protected], hannerl and ezrider428 for the photos.