London's financial district -- known as The City -- will have
saturated Wi-Fi access within six months, city officials announced
Monday.
The City of London Corp. said it entered a partnership on
Thursday with The Cloud Networks Ltd., a high-speed wireless
network provider with operations in the U.K., Sweden and Germany.
The network will be installed in existing "street furniture,"
including lamp posts and signs, within the area, which is about a
square mile, the City authority said.
Demand has increased for wireless coverage as the City's 350,000
workers want access to the Internet and e-mail as they shuffle
between meetings in different buildings in the district, a City
spokeswoman said.
The Cloud won the bid for a contract to install the network, but
the value of the deal has not been disclosed, a spokeswoman for The
Cloud said.
The Cloud runs several Wi-Fi hotspots in London, such as at
Canary Wharf, the British Library and Coffee Republic, a chain of
cafC)s.
Operators such as BT Group PLC and Nintendo Co. Ltd. rent time on
The Cloud's network, she said. Those operators in turn charge their
customers for the service.
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