Reminiscent of the failed Richochet networks, a UK company ‘Last Mile Communications’ is working to deploy 150,000 wireless transceivers in lamp posts and signs, offering 40Mbps data connections to customers. While they don’t exactly say what standard their “pico-cell wireless technology” uses from point-to-point, they do imply that each wireless ‘post’ will be able to communicate via Bluetooth or WiFi.
There are a number of questions raised by this: What will the latency of a repeating wireless connection be? Will the wireless posts drown out or interfere with other WiFi hot spots? Is the ‘WDirect’ technology going to be sold as a wide-range internet access plan, or simply on a location-to-location basis?
It all sounds sort of dubious, especially considering they haven’t begun to install any of the equipment yet. The more you investigate their site, the more information you can find about caching advertising information at each wireless post. People don’t want a filtered and targeted internet experience; they want bandwidth, and lots of it.
More information can be had at Tech Digest and the company’s site.
