London WiFi mesh failure or not?

WiFi fails to excite Londoners is the cry of Management Consultancy magazine reporting that the City of London WiFi network, which is administered by UK company The Cloud, has only registered 6,000 users in its first month out of a possible 350,000, despite offering the service for free. The magazine goes on to say that;

"Such disappointing take-up in the Square Mile raises fears that on-street wireless access will not be commercially viable"

However I am not so sure that these figures imply a disaster at all. Given that most people have internet coverage in their office and penetration of the network into buildings is likely to be patchy, I think that level of take up within a month could be counted as a good result. Especially when you consider that WiFi hotspots with the exception of airports generally see low levels of use.

If you look at it from The Cloud's point of view its business model is at least partly based on income with services provided for the local council, such as linking video surveillance cameras for example. Increasing the capability and use of the network to meet demand may be a good way to go. The firm also wants to team up with mobile operators to increase take-up of WiFi by bundling it into phone handsets, which makes sense as as handsets become more WiFi aware this is where the value of the London WiFi mesh is likely to come from.

You can read the Management Consultancy article here, and visit The Cloud