And so...
..google can track you, no matter where you are.
Google side-project Sidewalk Labs is buying the companies running New York's LyncNYC project that offers public Wi-Fi from payphones, in the hope of one day achieving World DominationTM. It's not the Chocolate Factory's first free Wi-Fi in New York – that honour goes to the free zone around its Chelsea offices – but this time …
If you've got free wifi then you can surf/Skype/chat for free. If this happens in other major cities it could have an interesting effect on mobile markets: do I really need EE/Vodafone/etc if I can do 99% of my mobile networking for free?
I would keep a sim as a backup but it would probably be pay as you go or a very cheap contract
I see it the other way round. 5-10 years ago (when Google first tried) this would have been great due to the state and expense of high speed mobile networks. Nowadays mobile data connections are (for the most part) fast enough and reliable enough that when I get to a location offering free wifi I just don't bother.
Free, ubiquitous wifi only works if it's just that: present absolutely everywhere. If you're still going to need a backup mobile network for the times you're in a park, the countryside or just any black spot then why not just use it everywhere?
@Oddlegs
Free is free, man! :)
Mobile data in AU isn't exactly cheap, with average quotas of just 6GB. And as that's also my main Internet connection (due to my dwelling type, not location), getting some free gigabytes would be fantasmo! :)
Have fun!
6gb and you're complaining, should see the Canadian market. Recently had the fun of watching a new expat British person trying to get a new mobile phone while I was sorting out some account details. Was a string of how much, and all I get is that little, also the look on the staff face when I suggested to him he check the definition of local and if he was heading out of the city what their coverage was
I never witnessed any city-scale free WiFi working, including Google's free WiFi in their hometown of Mountain View. You can't throw a bunch of repeaters on lamp posts and call it done. Too many laptops are infected with malware that will saturate the network. While Google loves calling out 0day exploits in other products, they're deaf to reports of their own products being abused.