New York City Launches Nation's Largest Free Public Wi-Fi Network

In a new step to improve the city's Internet access, especially in lower income areas, New York City has announced the launch of what will be the nation's biggest Wi-Fi network, which will blanket 95 blocks of Harlem.
It is simply called the Harlem Wi-Fi Network and once completed, it will be the largest outdoor Wi-Fi network in the United States, serving approximately 80,000 Harlem residents, New York City's Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a press conference on Tuesday.

The network will be completely free of charge, have speeds of at least 2mbits and will cover the area from 110th to 138th streets, between Frederick Douglass Boulevard and Madison Avenue. The first phase of the network's rollout will be completed by the end of December, and officials said the last phase will be finished by May 2014.
"It will provide free, fast outdoor Internet connections for portable devices 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” Bloomberg said at the press conference, before adding, "And I can tell you, as I was driving up here, I wish I had some of that. It was hard to make a phone call, but much harder to get data."
To launch the Harlem Wi-Fi Network, the city collaborated with the Harlem Children's Zone and Sky-Packets, with funding from a public-private partnership with the Fuhrman Family Foundation. In fact, it was Glenn and Amanda Fuhrman who approached the city with the idea of creating a wireless network in Harlem, the Fuhrman's said during the press conference.
The network is not supposed to be a free alternative to expensive wired networks provided by companies like Time Warner Cable, as new York City's Chief Information and Innovation Office Rahul Merchant told Mashable.
Merchant said they created the network "so that folks who are walking through the neighborhood through the city are able to just get an access to anything they want in terms of data," and that "this is a pure public service,” not a competitor for wired home providers.
This is the latest step in Bloomberg's efforts to improve wireless connectivity in the city, which have been ongoing for years.
At the end of September, Bloomberg announced a series of new public Wi-Fi networks to be installed across the five boroughs in a bid to make the city even more appealing to entrepreneurs and startups.
Previously, in 2012, the New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications turned some of the city's payphones into Wi-Fi hotspots. And in 2011, the city, along with AT&T, launched free Wi-Fi in 20 parks across the city.
And the exiting mayor isn't the only one pushing for more Wi-Fi networks in New York City. In January, Google announced it would provide a publicly available wireless network around its headquarters in Chelsea.
It's unclear if all these public and private wireless projects have significantly improved broadband access in a city whose connectivity lags behind other world cities, Time Warner Cable has a de-facto monopoly in many neighborhoods, and where Verizon has struggled to fulfill its promise to offer a competitive alternative with Verizon FiOS.