Wireless for all

The appropriately-named UK communications outfit The Cloud plans to deploy widespread wireless broadband networks in city centres throughout the UK.

The company claims that the move is the first major initiative to bring coverage to multiple cities simultaneously since mobile phone networks were built in the early 90s and will allow more than 4m people to connect to the Internet without wires.

The plan to have 'clouds' of wireless broadband internet access over the UK's major centres of population will begin with nine city centre areas.

The first phase is to be complete by March 2006. Hundreds of WiFi hotzones will be rolled out in the city centres of Edinburgh, Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, Nottingham, Oxford, Cambridge, Liverpool and the three London Boroughs of Kensington and Chelsea, Camden and Islington. It is expected that more cities will also be announced throughout 2006.

Each WiFi hotzone will deliver broadband-speed internet that can be accessed by laptops, PDAs, handheld games consoles and WiFi-enabled mobile phones.  People will be able to send emails, surf the Internet, access work networks, play games online, make cheap phone calls over WiFi and more from wherever they are within the city centre.