City of Inverness in Scotland Starts Roll-out of FREE WiFi Network

The Scottish city of Inverness has become the latest to launch a free “high-speed” public WiFi Hotspot service for local residents and visitors. The roll-out began this week and is being supported by public funding from the £315m Inverness City Region Deal.

The open WiFi network (SSID: NESS_WiFi_Free) – NessWifi – is free for all users and has no restrictions on time, although initially you’ll only be able to access it while pottering around the Victorian Market and surrounding streets (i.e. Union Street, Queensgate, Church Street and Academy Street along and into Falcon Square).

The project, which is funded by the Inverness and Highlands City Region Deal and led by The Highland Council in partnership with Rapier Systems Ltd., is only in its first phase. Going forwards the plan is to extend the network into a full city centre roll-out during 2017. It’s hoped that other towns and cities may soon follow suit, although many across the UK have already installed similar networks.

As usual we recommend that anybody who connects to a public WiFi network protect their privacy and security by using a trustworthy Virtual Private Network (VPN) service.