Industry analysts have praised Toronto's plans for a city-wide
municipal Wi-Fi network, welcoming Toronto Hydro Telecom Inc. as a
major player in business-grade wireless connectivity for ubiquitous
Internet access.
The proposed network poses an obvious and very serious threat to
traditional telcos such as Bell, Telus and Rogers because the
service will be much more than consumer-grade, say analysts.
Quality of service will be supported by the utility telco's Network
Operations Centre that monitors network traffic to guarantee
maximum bandwidth.
Toronto Hydro Telecom yesterday announced it would begin
building out a mesh of Wi-Fi access points to create a wireless hot
zone that would blanket all 630 square kilometres of the city by
the end of 2009.
The utelco is targeting the financial district by the end of
June and hopes to have the downtown core covered by the end of the
year.
The company is not new to offering secure, enterprise-class
Internet connectivity. Among its customers are four of Canada's
biggest banks, who use Toronto Hydro Telecom's Gigabit Ethernet
fibre optic network to transfer data between their Toronto
sites.
Analysts pinpointed the ability to connect to the Internet
seamlessly from anywhere as the biggest draw for municipal Wi-Fi.
Each time they log on, users can connect with one password and no
configuration issues even to a different service provider.
Ubiquitous coverage combined with high bandwidth makes Toronto
Hydro Telecom's offering a strong, viable alternative to the
cellular carriers, says Lawrence Surtees, vice-president and
principal analyst, communications research at IDC Canada Ltd.
The utelco's Wi-Fi coverage will reach further across the city
than any of the telco's and Wi-Fi's 2Mbps transfer rates and far
exceeding the 400-700Kbps of 3G broadband cellular.
"First and foremost, what makes this different is it's a
blanket. It's not little areas, so right off bat they have a
starting point, a reason for customers [wanting] to go to them. The
service is aimed at being different, covering your home and your
office," says Surtees.
"And if you're offering better coverage and Internet access
that's better and faster than a mobile wireless data service, then
that's another point of differentiation to think about."
For a competitive pricing model, Surtees says Toronto Hydro
Telecom should be looking not only at the market's Wi-Fi access
prices, but also at monthly and pay-as-you-go Internet access
models. "The service needs to be not just different, but also
better and/or cheaper."
Garry Foster of Deloitte & Touche LLP in Toronto describes
the city's project as a great plan, but cautions adoption rates
will be slower than anticipated.
"Businesses won't be giving up their wired networks immediately,
but as they learn to layer in security...this will get slow and
steady pick-up and then as it gets proven it'll get faster
pick-up," says Foster, Deloitte's national director of technology,
media and telecommunications.
Wi-Fi is on its way to overcoming one of its biggest challenges,
he adds. The technology hasn't yet shown itself capable of wide
coverage, but the Toronto hotzone has the potential to prove
Wi-Fi's full benefits.
"The beauty behind something like this is you've got one
wireless network, one password and no protocol and firewall
issues."
Using Wi-Fi to connect to the Internet from anywhere will make
it particularly attractive to the city's mobile workforce, says
Alicia Wanless, an analyst at Seaboard Group in Toronto.
"Mobility for employees has increased a lot, so getting Internet
access anywhere is quite exceptional," says Wanless. "As a
competitor, Toronto Hydro Telecom has really opened its doors and
increased its visibility. It's a really great move on their part,
in terms of competing against the telcos."
According to Surtees, certain civil servants at Industry Canada
are believed to be "somewhat chagrined" with the reluctance of the
major incumbents to roll out city-wide Wi-Fi coverage.
"It starts to make sense why incumbent phone companies such as
Verizon in San Francisco and SBC in Philadelphia have their
knickers in a knot about comparable muni-services down there; and
why I think Bell, Telus, Rogers are going to be possibly freaking
out over this," he says.
"They have oodles of the same unlicensed spectrum [in the 2.4GHz
band], but they're not making use of that valuable spectrum. They
haven't rolled out any seamless, ubiquitous service. I say all
power to Toronto Hydro Telecom for trying to do this."
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