PCQ Solutions Develops Cheap Public WiFi Solution for Small UK Towns

Residents of Llanidloes in Powys (Wales), which is a small town that’s home to around 3,000 people, can now benefit after local ISP PCQ Solutions made a free public WiFi hotspot service available in the area and it could soon arrive in similarly sized towns across the United Kingdom.

The Mini WiFi service, which had previously been operated as part of a trial in two of the towns streets, officially went live on Monday. The ISP already helps to deploy city-wide WiFi services but, with costs of around £200k to install and £200k per year to maintain, such solutions aren’t ideal for smaller areas.

However PCQ’s new Mini WiFi service is somewhat cheaper and comes alongside a price tag of around £500 per street. Crucially there are no on-going maintenance costs for the council, although we assume there might still be some cost if the service breaks and needs a repair.

Joe Lowe, PCQ’s Director, said (News North Wales):

“As our base is here we thought it would be a great place to trial it. Things such as tourism require internet and having free Wi-Fi will bring in more visitors.

So far we have achieved over 400 connections and over 350GB bandwidth has been used to date, and that is brilliant for an unknown service.”

However PCQ aren’t the only low-cost wifi operator in the market, with others like CLANNET also able to deploy similarly cheap solutions to smaller communities. Never the less it’s always good to see competition and improvements like this would no doubt be welcome in other towns.