Nokia has started a trial of free WiFi in central London that will run until the end of the year. If successful the Finnish mobile phone manufacturer will turn it into a fully fledged service in 2012.
Nokia will just be providing the branding and money, however, with partner Spectrum Interactive adding the WiFI hotspots to phone boxes around the capital. The hostspots will run at a respectable 20Mbps, with each user being offered a maximum 1Mbps connections to allow others to use the service at the same time.
Nokia isn’t the only company offering free WiFi in London,with The Cloud having offered it within The City for the last few years, with plenty of coffee shops offering the service as well as more recently pubs – where the WiFi has been provided by beer giant Heineken.
There are also negotiations under way for community WiFi across various boroughs as well as the possibility of it being available at stations and on the London Underground – although little is known how far such discussions have got.
If the plan is to have universal WiFi across London in time for the 2012 Olympics then this offering from Nokia should be appreciated but we still have a very very long way to go.