Free Wi-Fi Downtown

Looks like the only place that has free wi-fi in the downtown area is the Las Vegas library at 833 N. Las Vegas Blvd. Does anybody know of other locations close to the downtown casinos?

I just use my phones hot spot to get wifi

A free wifi cloud covering parts of downtown Las Vegas has been built.



From VegasChatter in late April:

Phase 1 of free WiFi will be available this summer and, from the map here, will include Fremont from Main to just beyond Las Vegas Boulevard. When that's completely up and running, the second phase will begin. There are no exact dates when WiFi will be available, but when it is, anyone in the coverage area will be able to access it.

Free WiFi downtown will be ad supported so costs can be recouped. The signal will be strong enough for light online work like email, web browsing and Skype, but it won't be fast enough to download movies unless you plan on sitting around for a few hours.

So lets piece this together:
1) downtown hotels charge for wifi
2) City provides free wifi
3) downtown hotels lose wifi revenues
4) downtown hotels now charge a "Fremont Street Experience Fee"

Neat how that works, huh?

I have not found the free WiFi downtown as of late June. The Beat coffeehouse across street from El Cortez has free WiFi with a good signal. They have happy hours in the morning and evening where you can buy something cheap and surf the web. Plenty of tables and even a couch. They will give you the password. It is an interesting place worth visiting. It is in the Emergency Arts building so there also are tiny art galleries in there as well as the burlesque museum.

Yes, doing some follow-up it seems that the City Council just approved the contract for the service today. Guess the VegasChatter story was optimistic about having it live this summer.

My experience was that even back in late April, most of the outdoor FSE area (I didn't try any further down than the D) had free wifi. This was from the Plaza to the D. I have seen posts from people saying free wifi doesn't exist because they can't get it in their tower hotel rooms. Well that is not the intention of this, to have free wifi for hotel rooms, and I doubt it will be coming there. It's for the public out IN the city to be able to use free wifi. The signal strength even deep in some of the casinos was not strong enough to use, and surely most of the hotel rooms were out of range. They are not going to be installing access points in the Golden Nugget, for example, to pipe in free wifi into a private hotel.

The only downsides I observed was that every damn time you reconnected, even 15 minutes later, you had to agree to their terms and conditions before browsing, and that the SSID varied for each access point as you traveled down the FSE.

As I read these posts, months later, I keep wondering, why isn't anyone else mentioning they used the free wifi? I used it for several days and several locations under the FSE. The only explanation I can think of, is that this was some kind of trial for LV.net to show the city how it would work/look, and that it is not turned on anymore? On the the other hand, as I said, all the reports I see talk about "can't get it in the rooms", "can't get it near El Cortez", etc, but never seeming to say they tried in outside under the FSE.



Connected to one of the several free wifi SSID's out on the FSE. LV.net is the provider that the city chose.