In a press release issued Friday, mobile operator O2 said it's setting up the public network at no cost to British taxpayers. The deal to provide the service was struck between between O2, the Westminster City Council and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea to "ensure that the millions of visitors that come to the city have the best experience possible and can make the most of what London has to offer."
Councillor Phillippa Roe, Cabinet Member for Strategic Finance at Westminster City Council, said the free Wi-Fi would allow tourists coming to London for the Olympic Games to be able to more easily share pictures and status updates from the games on their social networks.
Mobile hotspots will be installed on already existing "street furniture" such as benches and lampposts. The network will begin coming online in major urban zones around London beginning this month. This first phase will be followed by more rollouts in the greater London area. When complete, the network will be the largest free Wi-Fi zone in Europe.
Derek McManus, O2's COO, hinted the deal was a step in the process of expanding the company's Wi-Fi offerings. O2, the second-largest telecommunications provider in the UK, has been striving to build public Wi-Fi networks across the UK since January of last year.
London isn't the only city striving to provide free wireless internet to citizens and visitors. New York has been working to put wireless internet in parks and in the subway. Paris is also dotted with public hotspots. Other cities, such as Philadelphia and San Francisco, have attempted to build large-scale public Wi-Fi networks but encountered plenty of hiccups along the way.
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