A Day, A Week, Hemant, A Year

In an attempt to attract youth to the province, the Saskatchewan government in May will launch a new ‘wireless hotspot’ program in four of the province’s cities - Saskatoon, Regina, Moose Jaw, and Prince Albert. As exciting as this sounds I really hope the service is top-rate. Nothing will be more frustrating if one has to constantly battle with dropped connections, or really poor bandwidth in the hotspots.

I’m not sure this is going to retain or attract youth to the province, but it is definitely a step in the right direction. Major props to Lorne Calvert and the NDP government. I’ve included the article from the Star Phoenix for your reading pleasure.

Free wireless Internet to be offered in city
By Janet French of The StarPhoenix

It’s time to add the phrase “wireless hot spot” to your vocabulary — Saskatoon is about to be covered in them.In a move the Saskatchewan government hopes will attract and retain young people in the province, a new free wireless Internet service is set to launch in May in four Saskatchewan cities.

“I think it just opens up possibilities,” says Victoria Morris, one of the facilitators at the province’s first youth summit held three weeks ago. “If you’re at the Broadway Roastery or you’re in a park and you want to check your email or you want to surf the Internet, you have a place to do that.”

Free wireless Internet access was one of the recommendations emerging from the SaskatchewanYouth Summit, Morris said. Although the service is one of many changes youth are looking for, they’ll be excited that government heard their voices and took action, she said.

On Monday at the Broadway Roastery cafe, Premier Lorne Calvert and Andrew Thomson, the minister responsible for information technology, announced the province will provide free wireless Internet access downtown, on university and college campuses and in trendy areas of Saskatoon, Regina, Moose Jaw and Prince Albert.

Once the government spends $1.3 million installing wireless transmitters the size of coffee cans on light standards and telephone poles and a central antenna within each coverage zone, people with laptops and other wireless devices can surf the web and read e-mails around Saskatoon. Socalled “hot spots” where people can connect to the Internet will include River Landing, downtown, the University of Saskatchewan, the Kelsey campus of the Saskatchewan Institute for Applied Science and Technology (SIAST) and on and around Broadway Avenue, north of Eighth Street.