Om Malik says the Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, wants to push development of a city wide telecom to deliver free access to the Internet:
His intentions were first reported in Nouvel Observateur, quite a serious newspaper. James Enck says,
“The article refers to a city-wide network, and also seems to suggest
that the Mayor has aspirations of offering free narrowband internet
access and local telephony to residents of more modest economic means.”
The
city has apparently launched a tender for the construction of this
network, as per translation of the French language original. Instead of
going for ADSL technologies, the city wants to build a fiber network.
Some 372 Paris Metro stations will get Wi-Fi.It uses the existing fiber network in the subway tunnels for backbones.
Project partners including RATP and Cisco, will place two or three
antennae outside each station, (not inside the actual subway,
apparently).
