Camden Ponders Pilot of the Connected London UK Public Wi-Fi Network

The London Borough of Camden has revealed that they’re “exploring options” for potentially launching a second pilot of the Connected London public WiFi programme, which last year saw the Westminster City Council (here) area introduce a free public Wi-Fi network trial using single sign-on (OpenRoaming) technology.

Camden already has a public Wi-Fi network (or at least it did in the past), which was managed by the local authority and required people to sign up and log in every time they connect – often via different networks. By comparison, the Connected London Wi-Fi trial in Westminster only required users to scan a QR code and follow the instructions to install a profile on your phone or tablet, without inputting any data at all.

Once someone has installed the profile, the device will automatically connect securely to the OpenRoaming network across Westminster and the globe (note: the WiFi credential is anonymised and is not linked to any personal identifiable information that could be used to track an individual’s movements). But the Mayor of London has long envisaged this being expanded across the city’s other boroughs.

The good news is that the local authority for Camden has just put out a “preliminary market engagement notice“, which indicates that they’re working with the Greater London Authority and other participating organisations to consider a “federated authentication model based on the Wireless Broadband Alliance’s OpenRoaming® standard” for a local public Wi-Fi network.

Extract from the Market Engagement Notice

The ambition is to enable a seamless, secure and interoperable user experience across participating organisations while allowing each participant to retain appropriate control of its own infrastructure, policies and governance.

This notice is published solely to understand current market capability and inform future thinking. The purpose of this engagement is to better understand the maturity of the market, available technical approaches and delivery models, and to help inform any future procurement strategy and technical specification. No procurement has commenced and no decision has been made to undertake any procurement.

At this stage the local authority is only seeking to understand the capabilities of organisations that develop, own or operate relevant authentication technologies or services. But they are NOT yet seeking engagement with value added resellers, distributors or systems integrators “at this stage“. Feedback will be fielded until the very end of 2026 and, if anything does proceed, then the estimated contract dates would run between 1st January 2027 to 31st December 2027.