Taipei has now reportedly opened free-of-charge Wi-Fi services, and the number of users has already reached 1.8 million.
Taipei reportedly launched free Wi-Fi services in some special venues in July 2011, and it now opened about 540 access points in outdoor public places as well as access points on about 500 buses, offering free-of-charge Wi-Fi services with bandwidth of 512 Kbps. The Taipei government said there are currently over 2,000 access points in Taipei and they spent proximately NTD30 million in the establishment of these access points.
Taipei's wireless network adopts two types of transmission technologies: WiMax and Wi-Fi. Its structure includes three parts, including a data center, wireless base stations on tall buildings, and wireless access points in various regions.
Huang Guofeng, who is in charge of the promotion of this project in Taiwan, explained that the wireless base stations are installed on tall buildings and connect to the data center via fiber-optic network. The signal of each base station can cover an area with radius of 500 to 1,000 meters and the WiMax signal with bandwidth of between 4 Mbps and 8 Mbps are transmitted to access points. With the help of these access points, a WiMax signal is transformed to a Wi-Fi signal and provides Wi-Fi services.
When will Beijing have free wifi around the town? Any ideas?