It was back in 2007 that it was first announced that Las Vegas City Council had approved agreements to turn the City of Las Vegas into a wireless "hot zone," with community-wide Wi-Fi access. Equipment facilitating the service was to be installed on streetlights, traffic signals, and school flasher poles. And then there was a deafening silence -- until April of this year, when reports emerged stating the free-Wi-Fi-for-downtown plan was back on the agenda.
Apparently, the rollout will occur in three stages, with Phase I scheduled to be active by sometime in "early summer" of this year, and will include an area bound by U.S. 95 to the north, Eighth Street to the east, Charleston Boulevard to the south, and I-15 to the west. Phase II will extend free wi-fi to the zone delimited by Charleston, Wyoming, Las Vegas Boulevard, and Main Street. A third phase will extend service further southeast, along Fremont.
The Wi-Fi areas are primarily home to commercial businesses, although some residents of downtown will also be able to enjoy the free service. Per-user bandwidth will be limited to 768/kbps downstream and 528/kbps upstream (about the equivalent of a bottom tier DSL or cable Internet account), so it will be fine for browsing the Web, checking your email, or even Skyping, but don't expect to be streaming any hi-def movies.
It's also going to be a commercial venture, rather than one financed by the City, so it's going to be supported by advertising of some nature and will need to make money if it's going to last. How it will impact hotel resort fees remains to be seen, but as with the ongoing rollout of free Wi-Fi at MGM Mirage's resorts (see QoD 5/14/2013), hotels will likely still justify charging for Internet access, whether via an optional daily charge, or a mandatory resort fee, by providing higher bandwidth to their guests and a guaranteed service (until the free Wi-Fi is up and running downtown, who knows how reliable the service will be?)
