Leicester Square gets 'no catch' free wi-fi
One of London’s premier tourist and entertainment spots is about to give free, no-catches wi-fi to anyone in the area who wants it.
Tomorrow, Leicester Square will become a wi-fi hotspot courtesy of PR company Four Communications. They say “No longer will you have to purchase a coffee, a burger, or confusingly priced vouchers to access the web.” Amen to that.
The 8Mbps web connection will be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for anyone with a laptop or other wi-fi device that wants to use it. The only restriction is that there will be a fair-use policy so that no one person hogs the bandwidth.
Phil Ryan of Four Communications said “Working in technology PR it’s been a bugbear of mine for some time, the number of different hotspots across the capital and the fact that most of them were either too expensive or reliant on you purchasing another product or service. I’ve worked on projects for clients in other parts of Europe that enabled free Wi-fi access to whole areas within a city, or even whole towns. It seemed that somewhere as well known as Leicester Square should have a free access point for people to use how they wish and when they wish. It may well not be the capital’s first free hotspot zone, but we think it has potential to be the most high profile and widely used.”
Users simply need to search for “Four’s Free hotspot” as the wi-fi connection on their device.
“We hope to see as many people use the service as possible, whether it’s to surf the internet, access work or personal emails, make a free VoIP call or just to chat online using a messenger programme. Who knows, we might even see the Square become a real hot spot for online networking as more people learn about the service and start to take advantage of it. We have even set up a helpline number, 0845 453 3543, should anyone have difficulties accessing the service.” said Ryan.
Sounds good to me. Now, can we just get the whole of London to this stage, please?
Related stories: Find your nearest Wi-Fi hotspot easily | Wi-fi usage on the rise | GNER brings Wi-Fi to all its trains | Wi-fi clouds over the UK | The Cloud offers flat-fee Wi-Fi | Norwich gets UK’s largest free wireless network | Wi-fi travel tips | Milton Keynes soon to get WiMax – first in UK? | More wi-fi…
