The Globe and Mail

If you've ever surfed the Internet for free at San Francisco's City Hall, Boston's Harvard Square or Toronto's Harbourfront Centre – you have discovered a rarity in the world: a fee-free zone of wireless access called Universal WiFi.

Over the past decade, many municipalities across North America – including Toronto – talked big about providing free WiFi everywhere, formulating grandiose plans to make it as easy to pick up a signal as it was to access the local classic-rock station. The wisdom was that a wired city was a smarter city: more efficient, profitable and equitable. Those who typically couldn't afford access would suddenly have a free on-ramp to the information superhighway, as it was known back then. But in most cities, budgetary realities grounded their lofty plans.

Recently, however, Toronto councilman Denzil Minnan-Wong (Ward 34, Don Valley East) announced his intention to bring the idea back to life. “I want to be cautious about this,” Mr. Minnan-Wong said. “There have been too many rollouts and a lot of failures, but I'm cautiously optimistic that council wants to move forward with this and that it could be quite innovative.”

Perhaps best known for his campaigns to stamp out squeegee kids and panhandling in Toronto – and cultivating an image as a right-wing foil to Mayor David Miller – Mr. Minnan-Wong is championing a plan to deliver wireless access to public-housing communities, and maybe the rest of Toronto, using a network of mini satellite-like dishes – an idea that would join it with San Francisco in the cause of democratizing WiFi.

“It's certainly not a new idea, but it's an investment in kids who might not otherwise have access to the information highway and families that can't afford Internet,” he added. “Their children are at a disadvantage to other kids who can afford it. This is an investment in knowledge, in education and also it provides benefits to families who are looking for jobs and adults who are looking to upgrade their skills.”

He intends to spend the summer hashing out the details before unveiling plans for a pilot project to the government management committee in September.

One of the most likely scenarios he has explored would involve a so-called “mesh network.” Residents in public-housing communities could mount mini satellite dishes on their rooftops, which act as transmitters, blanketing the vicinity with radio waves that can be accessed by a computer.

Back in 2006, Toronto tried to create a similar effect with similar mesh technology. For six months, One Zone, a free WiFi hot spot, blanketed an area that stretched from Jarvis Street to Spadina Avenue and from Front Street to Bloor Street.

There have been too many rollouts and a lot of failures, but I'm cautiously optimistic that council wants to move forward with this and that it could be quite innovative — Toronto councilman Denzil Minnan-Wong

The effort was part of a greater movement percolating in the political ether: to bridge the digital divide. One on hand, there are the people who could afford the monthly access fees that Internet Service Providers charge and the computer that goes with it. Then there are the people living in low-income areas who are at an inherent disadvantage because they cannot pay to be online.

Local governments also favoured the idea, stressing that free WiFi would bolster a business's bottom line and burnish a city's image as a futuristic, smart city.

By 2005, there were more than 100 municipal WiFi networks slated in the U.S. and another 65 internationally, including ambitious plans for city-wide hot spots in Philadelphia and Boston, according to an October, 2008, study from the Community Wireless Infrastructure Research Project (CWIRP).