I know it’s hard to belive, but the news is true! The ministry of telecommunications is teaming up with the Association of Banks and Sodetel to bring free WiFi to 11 public parks in Lebanon (mainly in Beirut) during working hours.
- Herch Beyrouth on a surface of 30.000 m2, knowing that its total area is 330,0000m2
- Sanayeh- René Mouawad (22,000 m2)
- Sioufi (20,000 m2)
- Ramleh Bayda (10,000 m2)
- Manchiyeh- Tripoli (10,000 m2)
- Bourj Abi Haidar (7,000 m2)
- Talet el Khayat – Moufti Hassan Khaled (5,000 m2)
- Abou Chahla (5,000 m2)
- Yassouhiyé (4,400 m2)
- Saint Nicolas (2,200 m2)
- Basta Tahta (2,200 m2)
Sioufi will be the first park to have the free WiFi starting today when ministers Nahas and Sehnaoui launch the service.
It’s a great initiative indeed. But given the current internet speed in Lebanon, I highly doubt the service will be really usable by the people. I mean we’re barely able to make use of the internet at home, let alone a shared public bandwidth!
interesting initiative, but who will benefit from this? the old people walking in the parks? the kids playing? their mom watching over them? In europe young people scatter themselves on the “clean fresh grass’ in the parks and would possibly chat online with their friends or maybe browse the net, but here? in Lebanon? funny project…
I have to agree with Leila on this one.. just a little off the mark I should think!! But it’s a good start I suppose!
Local cable providers will hook their connections to these parks and sell them to customers.
+ what about bandwidth where are they getting that ?
I love it how politicians try to improve things that are the least needed.
Let us have a decent connection at home before deploying free internet into parks.
This is the stupidest idea ever. I wonder who’s the smart ass who came up with it.
No Leila, in USA and such countries have free wifi zones in public locations specially in parks.
This (the free wifi) will be the change point, poor people should be banned from asking money, it IS really disturbing seeing this, it’s banned all over the world.
For me, I can’t wait to go to Manshiyyi with my friends and take our laptops to use this connection 😉
It seems like a good idea. I might like to use it if I must travel to Lebanon next time. It’ll be cheaper than Lebanon’s GPRS, especially MTC Touch. Besides, to meet modern gamers’ needs, the likes of the Nintendo 3DS, and the upcoming PS Vita, have a console-to-console communication facility, like the 3DS’ “StreetPass”, that requires public Wi-Fi for certain value-added features. (Just hope that Nintendo adds more countries to their list, though.)