Going Wi-Fi in Canada: Municipal and community initiatives

摘要

While in the United States, debates over who should provide wireless Internet access (Wi-Fi) have pitted municipalities and community groups against telecom corporations (Feld, Rose, Cooper, & Scott, 2005; McCarthy, 2005); in Canada, the provision of Wi-Fi services has not yet reached such acrimony. Due to the widespread deployment of cable in Canada, most major Canadian cities have broadband access; Statistics Canada data for 2003 indicates that 86% of Canadians have access to broadband services, although certainly a lesser portion actually subscribes (Veenhof, Neogi, & van Tol, 2003). As in American cities, Canadian cities have seen many private Wi-Fi ventures whose objectives are to provide wireless connectivity in commercial establishments, but there have also been several notable municipal ventures like the Fred eZone in Fredericton, New Brunswick.