(Located in south-western Germany, Karlsruhe is only 15 kilometers from the French border.) In Karlsruhe, Strehhuber whips out his cell phone to check the wireless signal in the gardens and brings up the new WiFi registration page, which he happens to have programmed - it's currently available in English and German. Other cities, such as Cologne, have followed this week, with services supported by commercial operators. KA-WLAN, as the service is called, has just gone live. The antennas have been installed as part of a one-year municipal WiFi project that provides free WiFi in open spaces in Karlsruhe, such as the palace gardens, the central station and several other popular squares in the inner city. "The palace is heritage listed so we had to mount them on the inside where they would be invisible." Karlsruhe's heritage listed palace has not been spared in KA-WLAN's plans Image: picture-alliance/Friedel Giert "The WiFi antennas are hidden inside the bell tower," he explains. IT expert Bernd Strehhuber points up at the soaring bell tower of Karlsruhe's 18th century palace. In Germany, however, the city of Karlsruhe has just become a pioneer. And so it's been quite hard to get the idea to take off. There have also been efforts by companies such as Towerstream and Fon, who want more of us to share our wireless networks and allow a kind of piggybacking, either in a paid-for model or for free.īut there are significant and perhaps justified concerns about security in such wireless networks. In New York, there was talk of the city converting old telephone booths or call boxes into wireless hotspots. And indeed some have tried to make that dream come true. Citywide WiFi has been a dream for many of us for years.
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