Belfast promises free city-wide Wi-Fi in cash grab hope Having scored £6m of central government cash to improve its broadband coverage, Belfast Council hopes to get another £7.7m to rollout free Wi-Fi across the city. The money comes from the Ministry of Fun, which has given ten UK cities cash to improve their connectivity. But even more money is promised if the cities can …
We drove a motorhome round the North coast, starting there, but I was there during the initial rollout of a government project a decade ago, and it's a different country.
You should see the Titanic exposition, it's brilliant. It _was_ a wasteland. That entire area should be a financial centre or an IT centre. It couldn't get more brownfield. And more tourism. Talk about space for cafe bars.
I'd also, were I Northern Irish, get vodafone or whoever, to rollout wireless to every village. They have no data coverage, it's shocking. They have a country that begs more tourism, and could be all as rich as Croesus, with a bit more infrastructure.
The beach at Benone could've been from a tourist ad. Spectacular country now it's feels safe to visit (it was always safe but didn't seem it.) If they can remain able to not be killing each other, then they've got it made over there. I think this will happen, as the number of "I'm technically a Catholic" who said they thought the Pope was a nutter has sky rocketted, and I didn't meet a single died in the wool Paisleyite either. Losing God is the quickest way to get peace IMO.
The titanic quarter is still a bit of a wasteland. Money ran out before they could redevelop the whole place. So you sit in the office and your mouse bounces across the desk as a multi-ton scrap lorry flies up the road.
But for those who haven't visited in over a decade, do visit, the place has came on leaps and bounds. Even between the time I left in 2001, came back in 2006 and now I've noticed a lot of difference, and noticably more tourists.
Broadband is fast enough in Belfast, but now I live in the sticks, its more like using ISDN from 15 years ago.
BT has history here (hasn't everyone?). They had public money to roll out ADSL2 for 8mb to every exchange & then they got funded to roll out FTTC just about everywhere too.
Wanda likes 80Mb broadband.
I have a vague recollection that BT-Openzone rolled out a city wide WiFi network not so long ago but hey, who could be arsed to pay for that & the steeple BT Broadband customers won't be up to working out how to use that.
So the cynic in me suspects that this City Centre WiFi net will be provided by BT-Openzone as a means to recoup their outlay from someone.
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