Filed in archive
New Products/Services
, PDAs
, Smartphones
by Rico Mossesgeld on August 13, 2006

Congratulations! You'll be glad to know that you'll soon get to surf the web for free. Your City Council has approved a project where Metro-Fi will install over 500 wireless hotspots throughout the city, on streetlight poles. Even better, your city will get $18,000 annually from Metro-Fi for the privilege of providing free broadband access.
Now corona is part of the wireless city league. I'm sure Temecula, Riverside, Long Beach, Philadelphia, San Francisco (courtesy of Google) will welcome your city warmly. Don't fret if your smartphone or PDA has no Wi-Fi capabilities. There are a lot of people offering Wi-Fi adapters for your device, like the Socket P300 we featured a few days ago.
You'll have to wait for about 18 months or so though for the entire city to be covered, but it's a gradual roll-out; some of your neighborhoods will gain wireless access once installation starts.
Yes, I understand you might not want pesky advertisements on the top of your screens, but Metro-Fi has to find some way to recoup its costs. You can decide to pay $19.95 if you want the ads to go away.
Again, congratulations on your good fortune. Excuses about no internet access to explain a failure to read The Smart PDA are now moot. We'll have all the info you need to maximize your mobile freedom. ;-)
PS: I can imagine the exciting prospect of finally having porn-on-demand. But please, there's a lot more on the Internet, you know.
Thanks to Muni Wireless for the heads-up.
Permalink: Corona City Will Get Free Wi-Fi
Trackback: http://publish.creative-weblogging.com/publish/mt-tb.pl/31677
Mr Wong
Vote for Corona City Will Get Free Wi-Fi:
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Rating: 8.25 out of 4 vote(s) cast.
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Response from:
Tom
(12/21/06 4:52pm)
I think this is great the city would do this for the residence of Corona. Has it started yet?
Response from:
Rico
(12/23/06 3:00pm)
I think so. Check out http://www.hellocorona.com/Wifi.Cfm
for more details. :)
for more details. :)
Response from:
Bill
(03/06/07 10:18pm)
When???
Response from:
Bill
(03/06/07 11:25pm)
It's a great idea in theory, bu don't hold your breath! This is just another Net Zero type thing. Remember them? They lied and promised free dial up forever (with the ad banners). Eventually they will find the ad revenue insufficient and eliminate the free service, cutting it back at first & then eliminate it. And remember how slow Net Zero was? The info I have seen so far suggests MetroFi will keep the bandwith down to one half of the paid service or something like 500bps; less than 1 Mbps!! Eventually they will dump the free service, wait & see!! Also, MetroFi is a startup operation so don't count on the city getting wired up quickly or any time soon! Start ups are usually undercapitialized to begin with. If the system every gets to be city wide I will believe it when I see it. So far it's been 2/3rds of a year & there are only a paltry few hotspots and nothing close to even a section of a nieghborhood covered!!
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