Brighton and Hove Deploys Free WiFi Service Across 13 of its Libraries

The Brighton and Hove City Council in East Sussex (England) has announced that 13 of its local libraries will now be able to offer free WiFi wireless Internet access thanks to their new hotspot deployment, which was conducted alongside The Cloud (BSkyB).

Apparently the Jubilee Library, which welcomes over 1 million visitors each year, was the first location to trial WiFi with The Cloud in 2013 and has since seen a 44% growth in device usage year-on-year (the number of minutes spent online per month also reached over 1 million during early 2014).

“Demand for mobile internet access has exploded,” said Russell Phillips, Royal Pavilion, Museums & Libraries ICT Consultant. “This started with laptops and has now expanded with a huge number of visitors using tablets and smartphones. We cannot provide everyone with a PC and the ones we do offer are oversubscribed on a daily basis. By installing WiFi we have found a way to let all our visitors make the most of all the resources available at our libraries, be it digital books, training resources or basic internet access.”

Brighton and Hove is just one of 22 cities across the United Kingdom that are also deploying free high-speed public WiFi connectivity as part of the Government’s related £150m Urban Broadband Fund (aka “Super-Connected Cities“).