Manchester plans free city wi-fi

Manchester could become the biggest free wireless internet hotspot in Europe under plans unveiled by the city council.

The network, inspired by projects in San Francisco and Amsterdam, would cover 90% of Greater Manchester and reach up to 2.2 million people.

Councillors believe the initiative could make the city a leader in driving the UK into the digital age.

An open day inviting comments on the plans is being held on 15 December.

Interested businesses or individuals can contribute to the debate at the Town Hall event either openly or in confidence.

Growing use of the web is stripping people of their personal privacy, warns a UN agency report.

The number of passwords and logins web users need makes it inevitable they will re-use phrases, warned the International Telecommunications Union.

Re-using these identifiers puts people at serious risk of falling victim to identity theft, said the ITU report.

It called on regulators and businesses to find better ways for people to identify themselves to websites.

hmm. Free wifi is good, but it has problems. in internet you will never be safe, and in wlan you will be even more vulnerable, your network traffic and packets can be analyzed and stuff.
And frequency, there aint unlimited amounts of em, and there aint coming no new frequencies, and the more people starts using wlan, we run of them sooner.
I have seen few times that there really is no free frequencies for wlan.