Free public wi-fi in Sligo Town

Andy From Sligo

I attended the official launch of Sligo Free Wi-Fi in the Glasshouse Hotel yesterday. It was a very good presentation and it sounds like a very good idea for the town. The wifi signal on the street(s) will be open and not requiring a password to log onto it. There will be a minimal step of agreeing to GDPR Compliance at the beginning because some info/statistics will be shared from people logging onto the wifi (as far as I can make out I think it might collect gender and age details - I wasnt too sure on that I should have clarified it)

They are trying to get businesses in the town involved in getting an access point fitted into their premises so that when people come of the street and go into shop/cafe/etc then the people will seamlessly be still connected to the free wi-fi they are also looking for businesses to sponsor in a way of adverts on the 'greeting page' you land on when you log into the wifi.

The supplier of the wifi network is Magnet Networks and it is a joint venture of Sligo BID / Sligo County Council / Magnet Networks and up to 100mbps service (but it will be shared) so more people that are using it then the speeds will go down depending on how many people use it ... but that aside it will be free!

A good step, where we are heading into a world where some towns may only offer something like 15minutes of 'free' wi-fi and then you have to sign up for a package , or some towns dont even have any free wi-fi at all out on the street and you have to depend on going into a cafe/pub etc to avail of the wi-fi signal then i think this can only be a good idea for Sligo, and a good marketing tool for bringing in extra tourists and shoppers to the town by offering free wi-fi like this. I suppose as well if some visitors from other countries dont have an international 3G/4G package with their mobile phone providers then this will be very handy that they can just simply log onto the streets free wi-fi service like this.