Security threatens Berlin's free WiFi plan

A plan to provide free wireless internet across the capital city is on the verge of being taken offline, a Berlin daily Berliner Morgenpost reported this week.

The city's plan, which has already been three years in the works, was to attach 5,000 wireless transmitters to traffic lights to provide the free connection to the web. But a spokeswoman from Berlin's transport minister Ingeborg Junge-Reyer's office told the daily that plan is more expensive than originally thought, and the plan is now on hold.

"Simply plunking them in isn't going to work," Manuela Damianakis said in Monday's edition of the paper.

226 words remaining. Click to read the [thelocal="http://www.thelocal.de/21183/">full article[/thelocal].

Anybody want to wager some $ that Telekom/T-Online are behind this.. The story mentions the reasons and if your any kind of techie
you will know that the reasons given are worthless.

Yeah that's what I was wondering too... doesn't sound very credible to me.

yes, quite obviously there are some background conversations going on.
"concerns that the routerÂ's proximity to the traffic light electrical system could also compromise its security."
better alert the owners of every router in the world! the security of their electrical systems may be being compromised by the mysteriously evil routers!

As I read the article and before I read the first comment I recognized the American specialty of the lobbyist touch. If it will cut into the profit of "the company" (T- Online) the hell with the public. See healthcare reform in the U.S. as an even better example of the public be damned. RGD

Apparently it the internet access cafe lobby at work

Wow, signed up for 10 minutes and that's your first post? Is that you, Karl Rove?

Sorry I guess I was not explicit enough. The lobbyist's attitude (AMA, drug companies. far right wing ,etc.) is the public be damned not the government. I think 8 years of the Rove government is quite enough.