Free wifi in Dublin City: when?

Seanchai

I'm just home from yet another otherwise enlightened European city which does not have free wifi for its tourists (presumably, the natives have their own data on their respective phone networks and don't need free wifi).

It is that city's loss that I did not have free wifi while walking around the streets wanting to find out more about their histories, pubs and clubs open at night, concerts in churches and halls and so much more. I would have spent far more money. Of that, I am absolutely certain. Even in restaurants I was met with "we do have wifi but we can't give the code out to customers". Incredible.

I do not need wifi in Dublin. I hope that is clear. However, I do want to ensure that visitors to our city are given this service by Dublin City Council, even if the vast majority if not all cities in Europe do not give such a service to visitors to their respective cities. Free wifi *will* benefit Dublin City's economy, no matter what myopic, conservative people say. Yet it seems that Oisín Quinn is the sole Dublin politician promoting this idea.

Why, pray tell, is this development being held up in Dublin? We could be world leaders here.

SebBerkovich

It's obviously a really good idea with great benefits to the city, but i couldn't seen the government splashing out on any new projects considering it's had to cut so much money from so many existing ones... although if it's tourist based you'd imagine The Gathering's purse strings could be loosened a bit for it.

Dr. Kenneth Noisewater

I take your point, but what ever happened to a good ol' tourist office?

ProudDUB

There are only a couple of them dotted around the city. They are only open until 5 and they are run by very well intentioned, but often uninformed people. Last summer, I went into the one on O'Connell St, on behalf of a family member who was returning here after 10 years away in Canada. I was asking about pretty basic stuff (hotels and transport) and I was given incorrect information on every single thing that I asked about.

Anyhoo, back to wifi, don't Bitbuzz offer free wifi in the Henry St and Grafton St areas and their environs? Am pretty sure I availed of it last year when I lived in town and didn't want to use my own data package.

irlirishkev

It's a lovely idea, to be able to hook up to wi-fi wherever you are in the city, but do any cities currently have this in place? I've never heard of it, but that means nothing

edanto

It's on the way, but I don't know any details other than this boards thread about it last year.

Bitbuzz won a Dublin City Council tender to provide it.

Gumbo

Eircom are currently applying for permission for 100's of them throughout the city.

edanto

Great! What type of permission do they need to apply for?

Debator

If Dublin City Council provided free wi-fi they would be destroying the market for Irish ISPs such as Eircom and UPC.
Why give something away for free to a city of over 1million people when you can charge for it?

Slydice

I remember we almost got free wifi in the city but that it was scrapped.

Found this after a quick google:
http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/0109/wifi.html
No free wi-fi for Dublin
Updated: 11:37, Thursday, 10 January 2008

A plan to provide free wireless broadband throughout Dublin has been abandoned.

Dublin City Council has decided the plan would be contrary to EU law on state aid, as well as not financially possible. The project is estimated to cost €27m.

BeerNut

irlirishkev wrote: »

do any cities currently have this in place?

Berlin has it, based on a similar sort of deal to Dublin Bikes: it's owned and managed by an outdoor advertising company, presumably in exchange for more advertising sites.

Gumbo

Debator wrote: »

If Dublin City Council provided free wi-fi they would be destroying the market for Irish ISPs such as Eircom and UPC.
Why give something away for free to a city of over 1million people when you can charge for it?

It wouldn't be unlimited free as such but aimed at tourists and that and for the occasional user. I'm sure there would be limits to what you can access and download etc

Slydice wrote: »

I remember we almost got free wifi in the city but that it was scrapped.

Found this after a quick google:
http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/0109/wifi.html
No free wi-fi for Dublin
Updated: 11:37, Thursday, 10 January 2008

Think it has been updated since. DCC prepared a preliminary document last year outlining key wifi areas which was then used as a starting point for the roll out.

Will find out more in the coming weeks and update.

Gumbo

edanto wrote: »

Great! What type of permission do they need to apply for?

They require units to house the equipment. But I don't think they need standard planning permission, more like a part 8 or part 5 (not sure exactly which one).

edanto

kceire wrote: »

They require units to house the equipment. But I don't think they need standard planning permission, more like a part 8 or part 5 (not sure exactly which one).

Ah fair enough. If I was them I would have looked into retrofitting the WiFi gear into the existing eircom street furniture (surface cabs & phone boxes), but the coverage would be better if they were properly located, at a nice height.

But the cabling and installation costs would be far lower if they used their existing structures and they would be able to install many more devices, including a bunch of hot spares to cut down on maintenance problems.

Gumbo

edanto wrote: »

Ah fair enough. If I was them I would have looked into retrofitting the WiFi gear into the existing eircom street furniture (surface cabs & phone boxes), but the coverage would be better if they were properly located, at a nice height.

But the cabling and installation costs would be far lower if they used their existing structures and they would be able to install many more devices, including a bunch of hot spares to cut down on maintenance problems.

Maybe that's what they a doing

littleredspot

Op You could always download a lot of that info to your phone/tablet before visiting the city. Lonely Planet for example does city guides. You don't have to have data transfer on when you're in the foreign city to use it.

Gumbo

kceire wrote: »

They require units to house the equipment. But I don't think they need standard planning permission, more like a part 8 or part 5 (not sure exactly which one).

kceire wrote: »

Maybe that's what they a doing

kceire wrote: »

It wouldn't be unlimited free as such but aimed at tourists and that and for the occasional user. I'm sure there would be limits to what you can access and download etc



Think it has been updated since. DCC prepared a preliminary document last year outlining key wifi areas which was then used as a starting point for the roll out.

Will find out more in the coming weeks and update.

On checking DCC's planning, it seems that the Eircom applications are only to upgrade their broadband network to fibre power. I may have jumped the gun with the Eircom wifi units in my previous posts, sorry.

Slunk

According to Rte Dublin is to get twelve new free wifi spots. Grafton street, Henry street and a few other busy places. The full list is in the link but what pisses me off is in the article they say these spots will be signposted by images that represent Dublin. A Viking, a tourist and a pyjama girl. Yes, a ****ing pyjama girl. What retard was incharge of this decision. Is it now acceptable and normal and a representation of Dublin for people to walk around in pyjamas ffs. We shouldn't be encouraging this behaviour

Link: http://m.rte.ie/news/touch/2013/0131/365427-dublin-city-centre-wifi/

Gumbo

http://www.rte.ie/news/2013/0131/365427-dublin-city-centre-wifi/

A free WiFi service in Dublin city centre will be available from today, with access at 12 different locations in the capital planned.
The first locations will go live from 11am beside the Dublin City Council Civic Offices at Wood Quay, at City Hall and at St Patrick's Cathedral.
Dublin City Council had been trying to provide free WiFi for some years, but was told it would be in breach of EU rules on State aid.
But it found a way around that by allowing a commercial company to run it as a concession.
The new service is being provided by Gowex, which runs similar schemes in other European and American cities.
The service will provide free download speeds of around 500Kbps, while higher speeds will require payment.
The locations will be marked by mosaics featuring figures from Dublin, including a viking, a tourist and a pyjama girl.
The full list of locations to be included are: Smithfield Square, Barnardo's Square, Clarendon Street, St Patrick's Park, O'Connell Street Plaza, Temple Bar Square, Wolfe Tone Square, the area in front of the Convention Centre Dublin, Merrion Park, Henry Street, Grafton Street and the outdoor amphitheatre located at Civic Offices.

Gumbo

Yeah knew about this for a while now, only heard it was going live this wek during a meeting last week.

Should be good for the city and free aswell.

Might help with the new DCC Walk Dublin App too.

D1stant

Jaysus. Who's bright idea was that?


What next? fat bankers, grinning poiticians, shuffling junkies

edanto

That's great news! I wonder who's paying who.... I wonder are Gowex paying for the rights to be the DCC WiFi, or are DCC paying Gowex for provide the service and then sharing profits? Would be interesting to know how it's set up.

SebBerkovich

I'm gonna go looking for some WiFi at lunch later!

Gumbo

D1stant wrote: »

Jaysus. Who's bright idea was that?


What next? fat bankers, grinning poiticians, shuffling junkies

:eek: WTF

SunnyDub1

is it actually free though?

Or is it one of these connect to the wifi then sign up to one of those site where you have to pay €4.99 to actually use it :rolleyes:

When in the states the amount of "free wifi" signs around, I'd connect to one then be redirected to a site where I would have to sign up and pay to avail of the "free" wifi :rolleyes:

Gumbo

edanto wrote: »

That's great news! I wonder who's paying who.... I wonder are Gowex paying for the rights to be the DCC WiFi, or are DCC paying Gowex for provide the service and then sharing profits? Would be interesting to know how it's set up.

From reading online it looks like DCC opened a tender for it and Gowex are providing it free of charge, so i'd expect some advertisemtn thrown in, you also have to register with Gowex to use the wifi, so they must be getting some marketing out of it.

Free to the end user, so thats the main thing i suppse.

Gumbo

SunnyDub1 wrote: »

is it actually free though?

Or is it one of these connect to the wifi then sign up to one of those site where you have to pay €4.99 to actually use it :rolleyes:

When in the states the amount of "free wifi" signs around, I'd connect to one then be redirected to a site where I would have to sign up and pay to avail of the "free" wifi :rolleyes:

its supposed to be free. We will know for sure at 11.30am when it goes live, you do have to register with Gowex though.

The free Wi-Fi service is being provided to Dublin City Council by Spanish technology company Gowex. It will be available 24/7 at a speed of 512kbps, according to the company. Those who wish to use the free Wi-Fi will have to register with Gowex

Seems the base pack is free, upgrade to 8MBPS etc will cost - http://www.gowex.com/en/free-wifi/rates/

SunnyDub1

quote from article

The service will provide free download speeds of around 500Kbps, while higher speeds will require payment

Defo a money making scandal IMO

Tabnabs

SunnyDub1 wrote: »

quote from article



Defo a money making scandal IMO

:rolleyes: yeah, you called them out pretty good!

More info including a map here
http://www.dublincity.ie/Business/DublinFreeWiFi/DublinFreeWiFi/Pages/DublinFreeWiFi.aspx

Gumbo

SunnyDub1 wrote: »

quote from article



Defo a money making scandal IMO

Money making scandal you say? Weird view on life right there...

Mountjoy Mugger

SunnyDub1 wrote: »

quote from article



Defo a money making scandal IMO

WTF do you want? The scrounger mentality is still alive and well.

Gumbo

has anybody got it working yet?
You have to register on www.gowex.xom or through the iPhone/Android App.

miamee

SunnyDub1 wrote: »

quote from article



Defo a money making business IMO

FYP!

What's wrong with charging for higher speeds? What are you likely to be using it for while walking round the city anyway? A bit of boards or twitter or facebook, checking a Google Map for something, looking up a cinema time. No need for higher speeds for 'normal usage' I reckon.

miamee

There are 14 different icons including the pyjama girl one.

Dublin’s newest tribe, girls in pyjama bottoms were first spotted in the early 2000’s. At first believed to be a mythical creature, the Pyjama girl has since become a Dublin institution. Accessorising with big earrings, big furry boots and bags of attitude, they travel in packs of three or more, in the direction of the nearest 24-hour shop.

Mr Simpson

Wifi Threads Merged

riclad

MCDONALDS has free wifi, all librarys have free wifi,i notice if i stand outside most phone shop, i get an open wifi network.Many buses have free wifi.IF you are a tourist you can probably afford 1 euro for 60 minutes net acess in a netcafe.
I,D be more concerned about gangs of junkies hanging around the city centre ,temple bar.Not exactly good for attracting tourists to ireland.

Amirani

riclad wrote: »

MCDONALDS has free wifi, all librarys have free wifi,i notice if i stand outside most phone shop, i get an open wifi network.Many buses have free wifi.IF you are a tourist you can probably afford 1 euro for 60 minutes net acess in a netcafe.
I,D be more concerned about gangs of junkies hanging around the city centre ,temple bar.Not exactly good for attracting tourists to ireland.

Gangs of junkies on the wifi? :pac:

spurious

NiallSparky wrote: »

Gangs of junkies on the wifi? :pac:

On the wi-phy.

John_Rambo

spurious wrote: »

On the wi-phy.

Ha!

antodeco

Im in Thailand and there's free wifi nearly everywhere. There's a time limit on per 24 hours. It's great for checking the meanings of a menu, or looking up local places. I've a lot of offline maps downloaded but, for example, I was looking for a sports bar and googled away. It made me spend more in different places.

John_Rambo

D1stant wrote: »

Jaysus. Who's bright idea was that?


What next? fat bankers, grinning poiticians, shuffling junkies

Or Dublin bikes, plastic bag levy, no smoking in pubs and restaurants??

Embrace the future, embrace change my friend.

schrodinger

Myself and a friend tested out the wireless at the weekend... suffice it to say the experience was less than enjoyable.

As expected it's a register for service which will give you a restricted speed - or pay for the premium service.... [RANT REMOVED]

We tested St. Patrick's Park first and while the signal seemed OK we could barely load the main Gowex registration page or ping the default gateway assigned from the network - when it actually bothered to gives us an IP address. This was sitting out in the open, no physical obstructions and using a 500mW USB wireless adapter and combinations of 7db directional panel antenna and a 9db omnidirectional antenna.

After freezing for a little while more and suffering head aches from listening to the St. Patrick's church bells for far too long we moved on to use another location.

Off we popped down to Barnardo's Square and found the wireless there to at least load the main page, slowly, on an Android phone. So where's the best and most comfortable place to proceed with trying out the service ? That's right, the pub across the road. Brogans bar is right across the street from Barnardo's Square. We sat in the front of the pub at the main window and tried the service. The signal was dreadful...... I did however get onto the registration page. Huzzah!

https://wisp.gowex.com/profile/registro.do

So the registration requires your mobile phone number.... [RANT REMOVED] This is to send you your generated password.......... which will also be emailed to you...... I'd personally prefer to think up my own and not provide these people with my mobile phone number for a free public service. Anyway, on with the registration. Having some reservations about the process, I had been sitting there at the registration page for about 15 minutes or more thinking about what to do. Continuing on down the page I clicked the "Privacy Policy" - "PAGE CANNOT BE LOAD - TIMEOUT" I had been disconnected from the wireless service.

I was running a Linux laptop and when I'm testing wireless service I like to avail of the output of "iw event" which was telling me that I had been disconnected from the service for inactivity .... I then spent another 10-20 minutes attempting to connect back to the service to only be turfed out each time. After some more exercises in technical futility I got associated again but I wasn't being provided an IP address from the service.

Time to finish our pints and leave!

For the more technically minded here's a quick summary :

• General association problems
• No ARP from the default gateway
• Huge ICMP packet loss when an ARP was eventually received
• Weak signal strength when your not literally in the location tagged on the map
• Disassociation for inactivity
• DHCP issues
• Had to change MAC address to get reconnected
• Privacy concerns

I think it was crazy that both my friend and I had issues with our business grade laptop hardware and had to resort to whipping out external wireless cards and antennae. Hell when I bought my laptop I had the internal wireless antenna upgraded and it still wasn't enough to use the Dublin Free Wifi. I've seen community run wireless done better than this..... I hope the service improves over time but I don't think I will ever register for it since these people don't need my phone number, my preference I know a lot of people don't care.

ScottSF

Thanks for the detailed and technical report Schrodinger!

I'm curious if the service accepts a mobile number from the U.S. or Canada to get the registration password. So many tourists come from America and the WiFi is designed for the tourist market from what I read.

I would think that many people from the states are using their mobile phones for emergencies only and to get email and basic internet access. A text message is not free when roaming on a U.S. mobile plan.

Also many tourists have an iPad or android or kindle tablet with WiFi only and no 3G or mobile capability.

IMHO the free WiFi has to come with as few hassles as possible. We don't want tourists wasting time and getting frustrated trying to get on the WiFi while on vacation.

They most simple solution may be the low tech one. Give out scratch cards with a WiFi password good for 1 free hour with the option to purchase a 1 day pass (only when coverage is more city-wide). It also gives visitors a reason to go into a local shop or cafe to ask for one.

Gumbo

Great post^^^^^^^^

I would email Gowex and Dublin City Council to make them aware of it.

I registered the other day on Dame street and changed my password to a more personal one once logged in.

I also deleted the app as it was dragging on my location services for hours after use, so i mailed the developers and left feedback on the iTunes store.

schrodinger

ScottSF wrote: »

[...]

I'm curious if the service accepts a mobile number from the U.S. or Canada to get the registration password. So many tourists come from America and the WiFi is designed for the tourist market from what I read.

I would think that many people from the states are using their mobile phones for emergencies only and to get email and basic internet access. A text message is not free when roaming on a U.S. mobile plan.

Also many tourists have an iPad or android or kindle tablet with WiFi only and no 3G or mobile capability.

[...]

Excellent points, never considered actual visitors/tourist use, got too irritated after my initial dealings to think of further affected users. I'd agree that it's going to annoy them more than anything.

Cienciano

schrodinger wrote: »

Myself and a friend tested out the wireless at the weekend... suffice it to say the experience was less than enjoyable.....

I wonder if it's going to be improved? I notice a fair few places have wi-fi, but it's terrible. They just have it so they can say they have it. In any dublin pub that has it I always find myself using my normal O2 3g data connection because the wifi is so painfully slow.

schrodinger

Cienciano wrote: »

I wonder if it's going to be improved? I notice a fair few places have wi-fi, but it's terrible. They just have it so they can say they have it. In any dublin pub that has it I always find myself using my normal O2 3g data connection because the wifi is so painfully slow.

It really does depend.... I used to think Bitbuzz was a dreadful service and then the quality really did improve. I just won't pay for it But in the places where they have 15 minute Bitbuzz freebies I use it and it works very well for what it is - even if they do block most things other than HTTP and HTTPS which is irritating but doesn't affect me. But yes, most of the time though I would do the same, screw the free wireless - I'll tether to my phone - that's also a separate rant since Meteor "mess" with my data

For anyone curious to know what that means I discovered that I cannot perform SMTP over TLS because Meteor are stripping the STARTTLS offer from my private server........... [EXPLETIVES REMOVED] but suffice it to say I am appalled that Meteor won't allow me to communicate securely with my mail server. It's not like I am sending private information or passwords over the Internet .... oh wait.....

I'm digressing, apologies.

cros13

schrodinger wrote: »

It really does depend.... I used to think Bitbuzz was a dreadful service and then the quality really did improve. I just won't pay for it But in the places where they have 15 minute Bitbuzz freebies I use it and it works very well for what it is - even if they do block most things other than HTTP and HTTPS which is irritating but doesn't affect me. But yes, most of the time though I would do the same, screw the free wireless - I'll tether to my phone - that's also a separate rant since Meteor "mess" with my data

For anyone curious to know what that means I discovered that I cannot perform SMTP over TLS because Meteor are stripping the STARTTLS offer from my private server........... [EXPLETIVES REMOVED] but suffice it to say I am appalled that Meteor won't allow me to communicate securely with my mail server. It's not like I am sending private information or passwords over the Internet .... oh wait.....

I'm digressing, apologies.

I have general issues with anything that f*cks about with my traffic.

I also can't understand how any of these captive portal based muppets can't just:

• properly plan their AP locations using real wifi planning tools
• do registration for premium users on their website
• bandwidth limit every user on the open SSID
• use RADIUS authentication on a separate WPA2-Enterprise SSID for the faster, more secure premium service
• use 5ghz in the heavy RF of a city center
• use f*cking controllers

I had a look at gomex's android app... it's starting on boot, running in the background constantly, and making lots of little baby wakelocks in an attempt to murder my battery.

Gumbo

cros13 wrote: »

I have general issues with anything that f*cks about with my traffic.

I also can't understand how any of these captive portal based muppets can't just:

• properly plan their AP locations using real wifi planning tools
• do registration for premium users on their website
• bandwidth limit every user on the open SSID
• use RADIUS authentication on a separate WPA2-Enterprise SSID for the faster, more secure premium service
• use 5ghz in the heavy RF of a city center
• use f*cking controllers

I had a look at gomex's android app... it's starting on boot, running in the background constantly, and making lots of little baby wakelocks in an attempt to murder my battery.

Exactly why I deleted the iPhone app too.

schrodinger

cros13 wrote: »

I have general issues with anything that f*cks about with my traffic.

I also can't understand how any of these captive portal based muppets can't just:

• properly plan their AP locations using real wifi planning tools
• do registration for premium users on their website
• bandwidth limit every user on the open SSID
• use RADIUS authentication on a separate WPA2-Enterprise SSID for the faster, more secure premium service
• use 5ghz in the heavy RF of a city center
• use f*cking controllers

I had a look at gomex's android app... it's starting on boot, running in the background constantly, and making lots of little baby wakelocks in an attempt to murder my battery.

Hahaha. I don't have a lot of experience with many wireless controllers but they tend to be expensive and a single point of failure. From what we could tell the hotspot in St. Patrick's Park was just a single AP and in Barnardos square it was at least two access points, not a setup that would warrant a wireless controller. They were using Routerboard hardware, I'm not sure how good they are.

cros13

schrodinger wrote: »

Hahaha. I don't have a lot of experience with many wireless controllers but they tend to be expensive and a single point of failure. From what we could tell the hotspot in St. Patrick's Park was just a single AP and in Barnardos square it was at least two access points, not a setup that would warrant a wireless controller. They were using Routerboard hardware, I'm not sure how good they are.

I've always found controller based wireless networks to be much more stable. Plus you get the benefits of easier roaming as you move from AP to AP, load balancing across APs and spectrum. You also get interference, power output and spectrum management.

I consider any captive portal at least on WiFi to be a design fault TBH. One of primary reasons is it requires a huge amount of user-interaction which immediately cuts down on the networks' usefulness. The replacement on mobile devices is often a badly designed app that has to keep a watch for when you are in range of one of it's anointed SSIDs.

Don't even get me started on the mandatory user registration step GOMEX adds that took enough of my time that I'm considering billing them.