Free 2Gbps WiFi Goes Live for Portobello Market in London
Shoppers enjoying the Portobello Road Market, which is a street in the Notting Hill district of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in west London, may like to know that the local authority and Insmartcities have just switched-on a new free WiFi wireless internet network in the area and “at no cost to the taxpayer.”
The new network, which is said to cover the majority of Portobello Road and Golborne Road, claims to offer internet speeds of “up to 2 gigabits per second” (Gbps) and that’s allegedly “faster than virtually all home Wi-Fi networks and on a par with the best business services.” Naturally you won’t see real-world speeds of even close to that as this is a measure of shared capacity between many users.
In fairness a lot of the WiFi routers being shipped by UK ISPs today can in fact deliver peak theoretical WiFi speeds of around or above 2Gbps, although that’s only on your own local area network (LAN) because most home broadband connections are significantly slower (even the vast majority of FTTH providers only offer top speeds of 1Gbps).
Advertisement
The comparison with home WiFi is also a bit silly for other reasons, not least is the fact that at home you may only share the service with a handful or so of active devices (inc. many idle ones), while the deployment at Portobello Market is likely to be a little.. busier (COVID-19 virus fears notwithstanding).
Cllr Cem Kemahli, Lead Member for the Environment, said:
“Helping people to get online on Portobello and Golborne Road is a really significant step. Not only will this help visitors as they explore our world famous Portobello Market but residents will also benefit by having super-fast connectivity in their neighbourhood.
Local residents and market traders told us that access to the internet is a priority. We are glad to be able to offer them this high-speed solution to help them get online and also to take card payments more efficiently.
Access to fast internet has become a key requirement across the world. Improving our infrastructure will help everyone in the borough get better connected in the modern world.”
Apparently local market traders will also be able to use the latest cashless payment technology, via a secure and private section of the new network, making it easier for local businesses to process transactions and more convenient for shoppers and tourists. Otherwise people in the area just need to look for the WiFi SSID “PortobelloFreeWifi” (as usual users will have to register using their email or Facebook account).
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
« Cityfibre Trials Aim to Improve Safety for UK FTTH Builders
We’re at a really ridiculous and annoying time where wireless kit that can handle well over a gigabit over the airwaves is being connected to the rest of networks by kit with Gigabit Ethernet ports.
2.5 Gbit and 5 Gbit nGbase-T were supposed to have resolved this but haven’t been used that much which is weird.
A lot of the better Netgear router that are notionally 1G actually pass 2Gb/s
But I agree with you the lack of a baby steps pathway is frustrating.
IRL it is of course a straight jump from 1Gb/s -> 10Gb/s which is OTT for most things.
At no cost of the Taxpayer, but what about their data? Does this require signing into a cloud similar to that of BT or even some rail operators which in turn allow them to sell data?
I walked around this evening and the coverage is good but the network is unable to provide an IP address so does not work. Should be good if they get it working.
I was able to use it once but now it’s stopped?