By Peter Wolchak

The recent announcement that Toronto Hydro Telecom will blanket six square kilometres of downtown Toronto with a fast and ubiquitous Wi-Fi network will be a significant business boon that sets the city ahead of other Canadian centres.

The company will create a mesh network by linking access nodes on streetlight poles. A mesh network hands signals from point to point, so a business traveller in a cab can stay connected to e-mail while en route to a meeting. The wireless network will be completed by December and access will be free for the first six months. Toronto Hydro Telecom has not announced pricing beyond that but said rates will be comparable to Bell, Rogers and Telus, while the network will be 10 times faster than competitive offerings and deliver better coverage.

So how will anywhere-Internet affect business in Toronto? Imaginative people will come up with many ideas. Here are three.

Tourism joy: Canada’s tourism industry is expecting a major hit now that George Bush has decided to bull ahead with border reforms and Stephen Harper decided not to fight the decision.

Anyone crossing the Canada-U.S. border by sea or air will have to carry an identity card or passport by Jan. 1, 2007. Ground travellers are exempt for a year after that. Today, only about 20 per cent of Americans and 40 per cent of Canadians have passports. Some will run out to get a passport or travel card, but many won’t. Ontario Tourism Minister James Bradley was quick to quote federal numbers that predict Canada will lose $1.8 billion in tourism revenue from 2005 to 2008 if the plan goes ahead.

On top of a strong Canadian dollar, this news is terrible for hotels, sports teams, theatres, restaurants, attractions and tour operators. So how will they fight back?

In Toronto, by touting Wi-Fi. Travellers already select hotels based on Internet connectivity (see page 15 of this issue); now they can choose a city on the same basis.

Emergency services, fleet and asset tracking savings: Organizations with mobile workers — police, emergency response, couriers, construction companies, etc.—have been busy implementing mobile data systems based on cellular networks. These projects have been hugely successful, decreasing costs while increasing efficiency and customer satisfaction.

But these systems run on cellular networks that may prove more expensive than Toronto’s Wi-Fi, so look for organizations to investigate hybrid options: Wi-Fi when available, cellular otherwise. Integrating Wi-Fi could deliver savings to Toronto-based companies.

Free Wi-Fi is now even better: Backbone has repeatedly evangelized on the value of providing free Internet access to customers. No charge Wi-Fi increases revenues because people come for the ’net and stay for a coffee, meal, antique purchase, real estate consultation, whatever.

While the Toronto-wide initiative may appear to make these implementations superfluous, the opposite is true. Torontonians will get used to no-charge Internet for six months, only to have the freebie carpet pulled out from under them when fees kick in.

That will leave thousands of data-addicted city dwellers out looking for a free fix. If you operate a business in downtown Toronto, get ready to offer free Wi-Fi—in 2007 it will be a bigger draw then ever.