any cities with free wifi? or access to google/bing maps?

[tommo123]

was thinking on my last vacation how cool it would be if when abroad that you could access wifi anywhere in a city and use gps and google/bing maps to find your way around

would have made it sooo much easier than hopping from macdonalds to starbucks and using their wifi (roaming data charges are obscene!).

if cities introduced this kind of service for tourists then it wouldn't use much bandwidth would it? i mean, if it only worked for google maps and the like? not general browsing/downloads.

hell, you could even have a cab app for your city. don't want to walk? press a button and the app sends your location to a cab company to pick you up. hell, it can even send where you want to go to them too and give you a price before the cab arrives!.

think something like that would make some tourists more likely to wander out and about as it pretty much eliminates the possibility of getting lost - unless your smartphone runs out of juice

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

you can use wifi in Mountain View where Google provides it. I was about 2 blocks from downtown going to a froyo shop so I gchatted my friend via my iPod touch. Took a while to connect though but it was pretty cool. I got it while driving by too another day.

 

[cardiac]

We have WiFi throughout our city here in Valparaiso, IN. Pretty good coverage. Been here for 2 years....

 

[ImDonly1]

I always used my phone gps when travelling, this was of course in the US so I had coverage everywhere. Worked out great, although I'd bring a spare battery to be safe. GPS on a phone is so convenient when traveling. Especially when looking up public transport stops/times on google maps.

 

[vshah]

i have an unlocked phone, so I just get a local sim with enough/unlimited data, and use my smartphone as if I were at home. having google maps when vacationing is truly a lifesaver at times.

 

[Oyeve]

NYC (manhattan) has tons of free wifi. It is generally slow and I dont like connecting to them due to so many scammers and unsecure wifi but its there. Mayor Doomberg is trying to have the city completely on free wifi sometime next year.

 

[zerocool84]

There's free Wifi almost everywhere in certain parts of Downtown LA.

 

[pm]

There's free WiFi in Fort Collins, Colorado, (my city) in the downtown area. I was in Portland, Oregon, yesterday and they seemed to have free WiFi - it looked free... but I had 3G so I didn't bother trying it.

 

[OBLAMA2009]

they were going to do it here in sf but it turned out not to be financially viable. they do have city wifi in certain areas though but its really limited and slow. i dont know why they would do it anyway. they would basically ruin the business of internet service providers if they did that. besides everyone has a smartphone now so i doubt that there is a need for city wide wifi

 

[hanoverphist]

tempe, az has wifi city-wide for a fee. and even if you dont pay you can get on their system and pay your bills and such. not too bad either, it was 7mb down when i tried it out.

 

[WelshBloke]

My city in the UK had a free wifi trial for a year a little while back but there were too many complaints from competing commercial schemes so it was scrapped at the end of the trial.

If you are in the UK and want mobile wifi there's quite a lot of commercially available providers that are fairly cheap.

 

[tommo123]

i am in the UK mate but i was thinking mainly for when i go on holiday.

going to say manhattan and turning wifi on then and being able to use google maps to find my way around would be awesome

i dont really mean free wifi - as in the whole net. i was wondering if google had partnered up wit some cities to provide this kind of service to make a town/city more tourist friendly

reality i guess is buy a local sim?

 

[Fox5]

Wasn't this what WiMax was originally supposed to be for?

 

[arrfep]

Two years ago, I was visiting a buddy in Seattle. We were on the highway, and got behind a Microsoft campus shuttle bus. He remarked that he'd heard that MS has wifi on their buses, so he pulled out his iPhone and sure enough, was able to connect. It was unsecured, but I suppose there's not that many people who are going to leech wifi from a trailing car.

Not really related to your question, but I thought it was cool

 

[Rottie]

There's free Wifi almost everywhere in certain parts of Downtown LA.

this.

 

[Nebor]

Wasn't this what WiMax was originally supposed to be for?

Yup. My hometown set it up for emergency services then opened up the excess bandwidth to the whole city for free WiMax.