Europe > Northern Europe > United Kingdom > Virgin Media creates UK’s first WiFi Street

United Kingdom: Virgin Media creates UK’s first WiFi Street

2015/11/13

The unlimited WiFi service is available to residents, businesses and visitors passing through the centre of Chesham – and even covers part of Lowndes Park, Chesham’s 36 acre park space. The new network can provide speeds of up to 166Mbps and will be delivered using cutting edge technology with connectivity delivered directly from Virgin Media’s street cabinets and the UK’s first ever Smart Pavement.

Users will easily be able to connect by selecting ‘Virgin Media WiFi’ from within the settings on their device. The pilot is available to all 21,000 residents and businesses of Chesham.

“It’s great that our customers have access to Virgin Media’s public WiFi both in and outside our salon,” said Martin Parkes, local business owner and spokesperson for The Better Chesham Group. “We’re a very unique high street with many independent shops so we don’t have the IT infrastructure that big chains benefit from. This will hugely help levelling the playing field and will hopefully bring more people to Chesham too.”

Chesham Town Councillor Fred Wilson (pictured) added: “I am delighted that we’ve been able to bring a UK first to Chesham with Virgin Media’s ultrafast WiFi, helping local people and businesses get online. Efficient connectivity is pivotal to running businesses today and I am proud we are part of a project which is crossing new boundaries.”

Virgin Media chose Chesham as their place to pilot the scheme as the local authority is innovative and actively engaged with the local people in trying to find ways to enhance the area for both residents and businesses. Chesham is demographically representative of the UK population as a whole and is of a size that allows a quick deployment of services across the whole town, rather than specific locations.

Gregor McNeil, managing director of consumer at Virgin Media, said: “Not only is this the first time we’ve built metropolitan WiFi directly from our street cabinets, it is also the UK’s first deployment of a WiFi connected pavement. It is literally public WiFi under your feet. We want to build more networks like this across the UK and encourage more forward-thinking councils just like Chesham to get in touch.”

Share the post "Virgin Media creates UK’s first WiFi Street"

Related Articles

Jaguar Land Rover Takes Next Step in Aluminium Recycling with REALITY Program
2017/09/16 British multinational car company Jaguar Land Rover Limited announced a new project for reusing recycled aluminium in new car production before this week. The program, known as REALITY, is the next step in JLR’s ongoing strategy of harvesting aluminium from end-of-life cars and reintegrating it in new vehicles. The £2-million (US$2.62 million) project builds upon its existing REALCAR project, which the firm says yielded in over 75 thousand metric tons of aluminium scrap being reintegrated in new JLR units. Begun in 2008, REALCAR, which is spearheaded by Jaguar Land Rover, is a collaboration of several firms to develop a “closed-loop vehicle production model” that utilizes recycled aluminium. JLR has invested £13 million (US$17 million) in the project thus far, which it says will yield substantial benefits both to the environment and the firm’s bottom line, as utilizing recycled aluminium consumes as much as 95 % less energy than smelting primary aluminium from bauxite ore.
UNWTO: International tourism – strongest half-year results since 2010
2017/09/09 Destinations worldwide welcomed 598 million international tourists in the initial six months of 2017, some 36 million additional than in the same period of 2016. At 6%, increase was well above the trend of recent years, making the current January-June period the strongest half-year since 2010. Visitor numbers reported by destinations around the world reflect strong request for international travel in the initial half of 2017, according to the new UNWTO World Tourism Barometer. Worldwide, international tourist arrivals (overnight visitors) increased by 6% compared to the same six-month period last year, well above the sustained and consistent trend of 4% or higher increase since 2010. This represents the strongest half-year in seven years.
China confident to get new UK nuclear power plant approval after Hinkley
2017/09/04 The construction site of the Hinkley Point C project in Hinkley, Britain.
US LNG exports make European market more competitive
2017/08/27 The European gas market is becoming additional and additional competitive and US exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) are part of this landscape, Francis Perrin, energy expert, chairman of Energy Strategies and Policies (France) told Trend. “Energy is always a strategic business. Economic aspects are very significant of course, particularly the price of LNG, but nations as well take into account strategic issues. For some Central and Eastern European nations one of the key priorities of their energy policies is the diversification of their supplies, in particular gas imports, in order to reduce their dependence on Russia,” said the expert.
UK exports to Iran increase by 200
2017/08/26 During the initial four months of the current fiscal time(March 20-July 21) the United Kingdom’s exports to Iran had registered a large rise by 200 % and stood at $432 million. The UK was the ninth top goods exporter to Iran during the period, with 2.7 % share of Iran’s in general imports, which amounted to $15.813 billion‎, according to the new statistics released by the Trade Promotion Organization of Iran. Besides UK, Germany ($864 million, 29 % increase y/y), Switzerland ($663 million, 81 % increase), France ($456 million, 51 % increase) and Italy ($420 million, 26 % increase) were the European nations that took place part the top exporters of goods to Iran, in ‎the period.‎