As our mobile technologies progress, we rely on it much more and use it for many more reasons than we originally understood at the time of purchase. The 2 Gb or even 10 Gb data cap that many users have is not really serving us very well. With a now regular load of streaming as part of our daily lives, data overages are very common and the costs of our mobile technology increases. To support these new requirements for streaming, we need bandwidth. In cities free bandwidth is being considered as a utility and is being provided for free.
Kansas City now provides free Wi-Fi to all. https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/a-tale-of-3-smart-cities-how-and-why-cities-are-offering-free-wi-fi/
Smart Cities projects are generally being challenged to consider some implementation of free Wi-Fi and as a result we see both Toronto and Winnipeg are working on some versions of this.
Toronto’s free Wi-Fi map: https://wifispc.com/canada/ontario/toronto.html
Winnipeg’s Free Wi-Fi map: https://wifispc.com/canada/manitoba/winnipeg.html
How is your city doing with the Wi-Fi Challenge?
Kudos to those cities and community minded people who are working on these and many other Smart Cities projects!
If you are not near a Wi-Fi hotspot or live in an area which has poor Wi-Fi service, you are cut off from this great connectivity and need to fall back to relying on the data carriers, at an increasing cost.
Noted here is that due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, some of our carriers have waived data overage charges, long distance and roaming fees, until April 30th.