The Mayor of London (UK), Boris Johnson, has told a Google Zeitgeist event in Hertfordshire that the city should be totally covered by Wi-Fi broadband wireless internet access Hotspots before the 2012 Olympic Games have even begun. It's understood that existing street lights and bus stops will be used to carry the service.


The service will be made available to roaming users and ordinary residents in their homes, although it will probably not be free. The system is expected to adopt some degree of subscription fee or pay-as-you-go payment model. Further details have yet to be released.

It will be interesting to see how this plays with the new Digital Economy Act (DEA), which could lead to copyright holders threatening legal action against the service if customers abuse it for unlawful file sharing activity; perhaps they'll just send warning letters to our foreign visitors instead.