Taipei to cloak city in world's largest Wi-Fi grid
Dennis Tseng is an avid Web surfer who loves to hang out in Taipei's upmarket Hsinyi district, where wireless Internet access is freely available to all.
Whether he's waiting outside a department store for his wife to finish shopping or enjoying a lazy Sunday afternoon at an outdoor cafe, Tseng will whip out his electronic organiser to check his email, make a doctor's appointment or review movie listings.
It's the love of this kind of connectivity that is driving Taipei city planners to build what they say will be the world's biggest "Wi-Fi" network, making cheap, wireless Internet access available almost everywhere in the Taiwan capital.
"This will be a very ambitious venture for Taipei city because as far as we know, this is the only city that has tried to have a city-wide coverage of wireless service," Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou told Reuters.
While wireless connections are available in many homes, businesses and cafes around the world, Taipei's CyberCity project aims to make Wi-Fi ubiquitous outdoors.
New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Jerusalem are among cities with similar ambitions, and about a quarter of Amsterdam is already connected, but Taipei's network is likely to be the world's largest, said Robin Simpson, an Australia-based research director for Gartner Asia Pacific.
The Wi-Fi access points that will link computers to the Web in Taipei will be attached to traffic and street lights, creating a network that will cover 90 percent of the city by the end of 2005.
