Limerick city and county council rolls out free high speed wi-fi

il rolled out free high speed wi-fi across its own infrastructure in Limerick city center, the first in i – tiative of its kind in the country. The pilot Limerick.ie FREE WIFI initiative undertaken over the past few months covers the city center area along both sides of the River Shannon from Shannon Bridge to Sarsfield Bridge, and surrounding streets, Arthurs Quay, Cruises Street, sections of O’Connell Street, the People’s Park and Colbert Station Plaza.

The local authority will now be investigating the rollout of the initiative elsewhere in the city and in county towns during 2018. The project is the first of its kind in Ireland as Limerick City and County Council becomes the only local authority to use its own fiber network for the free wi-fi access and has located the access points on publicly owned infrastructure across the city center.

The free public wi-fi adds further momentum to Limerick’s “Smart City’’ program, which is seeing the implementation of a range of digital technologies with a view to improving quality of life, empowering communities and enabling economic growth. This latest initiative will have a range of benefits, including redirecting users to Limerick.ie or specific topical web pages, helping tourists to avoid data roaming charges and navigate around the city and support retailers in growing awareness of their businesses in the city center areas.

The use of local authority-owned infrastructure has decreased the amount of disruption to businesses and the public as the wi-fi infrastructure was being installed. The project leader Gary Hennessy said: “While the provision of free wi-fi to the public is nothing new, what is unique about the Limerick project is the method of its delivery. Limerick City and County Council is using its own network to provide the wi-fi.”

Whereas projects in other cities and towns across Ireland have installed access points in business premises, we have utilized public lighting poles and council-owned infrastructure and buildings to locate the access points for the high speed wi-fi. This process also means that the area covered by the Limerick.ie FREE WIFI can quickly be expanded as it will eliminate the need to negotiate with business owners to use their premises as access points.

When users sign up to Limerick.ie FREE WIFI, they will be redirected to the Limerick.ie website, which will allow them to learn about what Limerick has to offer to business, the best places to shop, stay, things to do and places to eat. As Limerick.ie FREE WIFI operates over Limerick City and County Council’s own fiber network, there are no Internet Service Provider (ISP) costs and connections are routed through the council’s data center in Doora doyle. Users of the Limerick.ie FREE WIFI can be confident of their security as all traffic is routed through Limerick City and County Council’s own firewall.